FFuture Remnants of What Has Been — Essen, 2020

Our collective memory is shaped by the way history is documented, preserved, collected, and presented to us in the here and now. Whether it is technical progress, new scientific insights, or changes within our society, all these aspects, and even more, shed new light on our past. These innovations enable us to experience history in new ways. Perhaps is it not only the past that influences our current reality, but also the present and the future, which in turn affect how we encounter the past and our previous experiences.

This body of work integrates the trivial through photographic staging and recontextualization into a very specific canon of images. Because of distinct aesthetics, what is shown in the pictures and their display, the photographic material is placed in an archeological and scientific context, mimicking scientific strategies of legitimation without providing any valuable information. A fictitious space of possibility, in which real and unreal objects are blended together and placed within a series of expectations. Visible voids and missing structures are filled and getting reconstructed by our own imagination. This tangible present of absence invites the viewer to contemplate on the past. A juxtaposition of dystopian and archaic tableaus, of historical and fictional elements, transforms the pictures shown into something like a stage set against which archaeological utopias can unfold.

The work is composed of photographs, analog paper collages of found book pages, screenshots of 3D models of various archaeological finds and excavation sites, as well as found images from older literature and books.