CONCEPT
AN ART EXHIBITION TIME CAPSULE
An open call is made each year for this exhibition, which is to be unveiled in the year 2121 – one hundred years in the future.
In 2121 none of us are here presumably. Given this time frame people are encouraged to think long-term, since there is no short-term gain nor much retroactive force with a time span larger than life. The frame can help us reflect on what we are now. Perhaps the most important thing here is the requirement to look beyond oneself – this part of the creative process is thus reset. In relation to 2121, there are no self-reinforcing incentives, no money, nothing to look forward to, nothing to show off.
ANNUAL CONTRIBUTIONS
The artists are most likely not alive when the artworks finally are opened to the public. However, expo2121 is expanded and previewed annually.
An open call is sent out each year, with varying wording and perspective so as to encourage different groups to contribute.
A small group of curators see the contributions each year and discuss them in a public forum. These comments are documented for posterity and are widely available. The curation group changes on a regular basis (members can appoint successors). With these yearly discussions the project is not hermetically sealed: something seeps out, even from black holes.
REVIEW PROCESS
INTRODUCTORY NOTES
Who is the document for? Since the exhibition only goes public after the artists are gone, the works could have been sealed completely until 2121, with nothing coming out of it. On the other hand, an anonymized and indirect exposure, through curatorial comments, gives the public something to grab onto during a century of suspense. Limiting the viewing to a few curators still transforms the artist's perspective, deemphasizes artist vanity and careerism, etc.
Works , titles, and artists' names are anonymized, referred to by an entry number (e.g. #8 or #23).
REVIEWER GUIDELINES
Reviewers are instructed to comment on what they find interesting, or not interesting – in individual works or generally, on trends and themes. The form of this feedback is flexible: paragraphs, questions, notes, pictures, memes, musing, ... an essay.
The curatorial review document is for the project a yearly meta-process which is archived as part of it. The review will be edited for the public, including participants. When finished it is archived as static html/text.
CURATOR GROUP, 2022:
Konstantina Mavridou, Joubin Zargarbashi
• This is the review document for works submitted in 2021-2022.
2021
#1
Generated text, randomness; creates confussion in our era, but a valid perspective of what in 2121 year would be understood. Bytes aesthetics are appreciated, I hope text based formats will be still readable then.
#2
Emoticon-hieroglyphics genealogy map? It feels unfinished, I bet there is more, I wonder where is the end.. and with what emoti(c)ons are linked to? The www - a total different non-emotional state of representations?
#4
Curious but old-look like font already, hidden history, memory, time, a location, a room, an address? I wonder what would 'old' mean in 2121. Would it be something like archaic? Are we looking for meaning in this work? Or the discussion should be for the meaning of the symbol itself?
#8
Is it meant to transfer knowledge or question the complexity of algorithmic process in the future for human brains or supercomputers? I think this will be just a playful simple and quick one to solve in the future by humans or not!
#9
I would prefer just the title by itself as the artwork. The assumption of the non-readable alienated message seems something very '60s, reminding us the classic old sci-fi movies, which have nothing to say about the future, but only commenting traumas of the past.
#10
GPT/AI trending technology at this moment as Pythia of Delphi for what the future will bring.
#11
Who knows...Is it only energy?
#12
Why a diagram? And what is the context of this diagram? I am as lost as the future 'artist' will be.
#13
oh, the humanity! Will it be even faster and more intense in 2121 than now?
#14
Looped physicality that maybe in 2121 will not exist. It can be used as sound art piece only, given only a title.
#15
Is this the negative space of snow of the future?
#17
stillness. Will this be the new state of future acrobatics? So many and intense external unpredictable factors, where our body stays still out of fear.(?)
#18
Becoming one with the natural environment, as we know it now.. But what about in 2121?
#19
In between injection, something happens. A new event, new state of Kairos - Kairos has changed. Philosophically, that would someone say, kairos will have changed in 2121 moment, but aby moment probably will be somewhere in between (not too early or too late).
#20
A hidden treasure map of the past; a lost language, a rebirth of a new one.
#21
Will this audience even exist?
#23
Interesting message to pass to 2121 species, but I don't think the idiotic aspect of AI would be appreciated that much as now. It might be another type of AI or most probably some other super extravagant high tech trends that will have taken over the world. So the idiocy continues.. and will continue.. until nothing is left. :)
#25
Human's impunity and ego. What would 'legacy' mean in 2121 I wonder? Would it make any sense at all? Or species would be thrown into the vortex of millisecond's ephemerality?
2022
#29
What is the topic addressed for 2121?
#29
an interaction is reflected and preserved in a medium that reflects and creates the chance of its manipulation and disappearance.
#30
Wondering if the body part print language will give some extra meanings and messages in 2121. I don't think we have unlocked yet the human body language and its energetic sphere of things.
#30
Beautiful image and sound that suggest an intimacy. What is important is the trace of action captured by the medium. This is timeless (at least for a few hundred years).
#31
This is a visceral travel in time and expectation! Expect to find, and search, and connect, to a level that might not be comfortable for you.
#32
In a minimal but still matching representation, this work describes how a natural phenomenon has been instrumental to humans in life. Or an anthropocentric integration of a natural phenomenon, and its demise after alternatives are introduced.
#33
I trust the search engine predictions.
#33
A snapshot of an act of acquiring knowledge and a promise frozen in time. One that the viewer is triggered to re-enact…
#34
Very possible!
#34
An ephemeral presentation of a prediction, this work is one from a series. The chosen medium of this textual work, makes it accessible, tangible and vulnerable.
#35
Quite compelling dialogue, but also very predictable. However, it shows the poetic potential of ChatGPT.
#35
This is an essay about which there might be some ethical concerns. At least at our times…
#36
Back to the future! Voo00om!
#36
Two seconds
#37
Looks like a trailer of a virtual AV database of and about the history of internet technology. Very useful for 2121 species, if they all would still understand our language.
#37
This short compilation of found videos with no narration, represents a promise of a global village, turned into a reality of globe of villages
#38
This might be something very common in 2121.
#39
Seemingly a proposal for an action, or a form of introduction, or replacement…
#40
What does the persistence of vision represent in society? Is it linked to all the illusional digital or not input around us on a daily basis or some kind gf conspiracy?
#41
:)
#41
What was most intriguing for me about this work, was that what I imagined after reading the description could not be more different from the presented picture of the work.
There is something brutal about this work and to me, it brings something from the past than showing something from a future. But maybe there is no difference.
#42
A very valid and useful question. I felt while reading the text, that it didn't matter to see another representative image next to it. Then I saw the image and I agree, but even that is not necessary. The absurdity.
#42
Is this a history of common appliance recorded for the future? To me this is what this essay does. At least for one part of the world. But although not considered in the essay, the fact that this is only true in some parts of the world, can have something to do with time.
#43
A quarantine loop. A quarantine loop. A quarantine loop.
#43
Documentation of a ritual disrupted by editing and sound that travels from mystic to daily and banal and back.
#44
Yes, scary repercussions.
#44
A beautiful picture of a situation onto which one can project a personal and not far away feeling.
#45
My question to the artist is, what is hidden behind the question he/she/they posed on the matter of how humans deal with scale?
#46
is this a broken country or a prediction of something that has already happened?
#47-169
Is this a human-made AI? I wonder if in 2121 the whole series of works would give enough data to the reader/observer to recognise any hidden patterns.
#47-169
This is an interesting project that could last forever. It seems to emphasise the sheer amount of information we come across via our screens and all the information we produce.
And between all these images of everything, how do we find ourselves?
#170
We simply don't know how reality or the meaning of absurd or perception will be in 2121, so this is again one more guessed assumption as other works.
#171
Is this fictional or a futuristic product proposition?
#171
Simple but believable and intrusive, in a good way.
2021
Call for participation. 100 years to go!
2022
First annual project reviews.
2121
Public exhibition.
"The 2014 Nobel Prize winner for chemistry, Stefan Hell, during his Nobel banquet speech, recalled the 1933 Nobel Prize winner Erwin Schrödinger as saying, “It is fair to state that we are not going to experiment with single particles any more than we will raise dinosaurs in the zoo.” Hell, speaking eighty-one years after Schrödinger’s comment, quipped, “Now, ladies and gentlemen, what do we learn from this? First. Erwin Schrödinger would never have gone on to write Jurassic Park . . . Second. As a Nobel Laureate you should say ‘this or that is never going to happen,’ because you will increase your chances tremendously of being remembered decades later in a Nobel banquet speech” [more]
ASKING FOR A FRIEND
Q. Does the show require a live and sentient audience, human or otherwise?
A. This has to be open. It's reasonable to envision a machinery audience, so artists were guided to consider creating art for machines, whether they like the scenario or not. Art for machines may be a thing as time goes by.
Q. Will the project's domain name be purchased for 100 years?
A. Someone will have to inherit it to maintain its public presence. Probably it will need to migrate many times. Recording the transitional dimension of it with notes will be important for maintaining the history of expo2121. Saving everything seems like the best policy since nobody knows what will be useful in 2121.
Q. Will it be as easy for machines to play dumb as humans to play intelligent?
A. One could suspect that our unconscious would be hard to simulate, though so far it seems the easiest part, which begs the question why we are stuck in dreaming dreams. How far away is AI dream-therapy for directing the show? And what is a dream without bugs?
Q. Where will the audience be? Where will the show take place? Intergalactic? Mars only? On low-orbit satellite? On earth? At sea? On dry land?
A. This and other things are speculative at present. Suggestions for maintaining the feasibility of the exhibition in 2121 can be proposed by future curators. Bury it in the desert? Throw it into a lava stream? Future collaborators will have to let circumstances guide them.
Q. What would be interesting for an audience in 2121? Would they rather look back to those who looked forward to them again? How does it involve the present? What is to be communicated - the human witness, the truth? Is it reasonable to assume that truth is the most durable, that which will have value beyond ourselves?
A. This requires not only objective scientific truth or facts, but human, experienced truth, simple and sincere, things we'd rather like to postpone and project into the future, or cover over from the past. What happens when this elastic breaks? We can build what the Germans used to call a Giftschrank, a poison cabinet that contains dangerous ideas and works that should still be preserved and available under certain circumstances.
OBSERVATIONS
From a curatorial standpoint, mounting an unfunded exhibition that won't take place for a century is not a sure thing. Would the artists who respond to an open call be ready to address this unusual format and adapt their themes accordingly? While there was some work contributed that didn't quite fit, there's more cohesiveness in this collection than might have been anticipated. In spite of the shortcomings of some individual works, as a whole the collection address topics and conundrums that are out of the ordinary in contemporary art.
The strangeness of the exhibition placed some pressure on the artists to deliver something new. That some of these responses feel awkward is unsurprising given the scenario, and the unknowability of the future. There's a hesitation – don't science fiction authors do this kind of long-range imaginative work better?
But after reviewing everything, what stands out is that the concept of the show resonated with the artists. Many were immediately ready to tackle the contingencies of a post-human future, machine intelligences, and the like.
REFLECTIONS
The show will grow with works over the years, the point is that it goes live in 2121, so people won't see their work showed – they'd be long dead. So there's an element of the cryptographic and hidden. As in noemata.net/ueop works can be proved to exist even without being shown.
For art in general, there's a shade of the monkey in mindless creation, which may come from the need to do things – it's bodily necessary. You give some to rationalism and leave the rest to the body itself, it demands its purposeless actions, purposeless because it doesn't need purpose. And then it falls into the art domain by not having further instructions. But how's anybody to reduce x to y? That's already on the side of rationalism, of logic, but for which even identity x=x remains problematic. A relation to itself, it seems more like an unattainable infinite regress.
What do we do with the black box? The black box of quantum mechanics? It's been already hundred years, what could possibly be revealed about the wave-function in the next? The simplest solution seems to me, B., to be the reality of the wave-function, but which spews worlds and library-cards. At any point, any change, there's a hard fork. What is this hard fork, the frame of our phenomenology?
I kind of see myself as a worm eating earth, chewing my way, and my way is created as I chew. Now the boundaries, what I experience as my edges, they seem to be already in place, no matter what I choose to chew. It's a sort of foundness, I find myself choosing x or y. It bounces at the mirrors and only diffracts, falls to pieces, with its constituents or reconstructed body, the property of being found, of a being found, reserved and available under certain circumstances.
NOTES
• Media formats will change. Metadata should be included, on how to experience the work, since media strategies may be obsolete in 2121.
• Domain names won't last 100 years. Some references for domain name research:
blockchainsavvy.io/blockchain-domain-names
101domain.com/blockchain_domains.htm
From where will the domain name be registered? International space station? NFT of the domain name? Long video on NFT:
vimeo.com/563722573
There is not consensus about using blockchain due to its high carbon cost.