future archive at SU 07

future archive at SU 2007

The future archive is a project that issues a series of responses to the problem of how to perform the future. It engages interview- conversations that take place between 2010 and 2500, whereby two or more people performatively inhabite a proposed version of futurity, in which contemporary society is remembered. In every interview, a different future is at stake.

At Pa-f SU 2007, there will be 7 days of ongoing conversations and interviews, which all SU-attendant are invited to join or instigate. The future archive project will be presented, and a series of public discussions will ensue.
If you have any comments, ideas or suggestion with regards to this, find more info and a contact address at www.futurearchive.org

The project aims to offer a space for carefully developing vocabularies and syntax which might point towards potential ways of thinking, acting and existing. It engages speech acts which receive their legitimacy not only via interpellation and promise, but, taking a historical position of remembering, allude to a possible regime of truth – thus multiplying their power of creating a reality out of an utterance. The project method encourages a focus on hopes and desires for future ways of co/existing, and envisioning ways of getting there. While there is an interviewing party and an interviewed, what is engaged is working together to make a movement towards what could be/ go beyond contemporary discourses, problems and politics.

With the questions of transformation and potentialities as its starting point, the project generates a map of divergent hopes and tactics, focusing on connections as well as points of disagreement. Conversations are video recorded and edited in a documentary style, subsequently becoming part of an online platform that acts as archival as well as discursive site. The performative or ´fictive´ discourses that are structured around various issues of concern, are offered online for further development.

At futurearchive.org, all material (audio/video/text etc) generated in the framework of the project becomes available for download, commentary and non-commercial use.

In 2007, the future archive brings forth a series of public conversations (taking place in the UK, Austria, and France). These will be collaboratively curated events, pertaining to thematic strands within the project, that take the form of discussions, performances, screenings, and so forth. In a relevant institution or open space, collective transformation of a present space into a site of futurity is attempted.

A long- term project, the future archive is a largely collaborative endeavour, and consists of nodes that can occur both in connection with as well as independently of Manuela, who is the initiator and organizer of the project. The future archive can come to contribute to many occasions, such as exhibitions, symposia, radio/ tv shows, films, performances.