Future Heritage Collection #1
Installation, video (2013)
Commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, Ljubljana, SI
The Future Heritage Collection [FHC] is a collection of stories produced through interviews with “experts” on varied subjects having to do with heritage, including Islamic manuscripts, Egyptian architecture, and the memory of the Holocaust. Interviewees are asked to propose an example of what they consider to be “future heritage.” FHC-Archaeologist takes a hybrid form of a traveler bag with a mailbox containing messages from the future. The box stores ten different types of postcards, each written from the perspective of a future archaeologist. In addition, the mailbox contains a small screen displaying a 10-min video that narrates the content of these postcards. Playing an “archeologist from the future” in ten different future scenarios, I ask the viewer to contemplate a world in which cultural heritage has become inaccessible or irrelevant for a specific reason. Thus, the viewers are at once fictively in dialogue with a time not yet come, but also speaking with the belief that audiences in the present time can and will connect with their narrative. The Future Heritage Collection is aimed to foster a discussion about the relationship between citizenship and access to—as well as ownership of—cultural heritage. The initial exchanges of stories is aimed to prompt the global public to contribute their own stories, act on a civic level, or even engage with governments on behalf of a common heritage.
…………………………………………………………………………
Materials: 1 video, textile and cardboard,postcards
Dimensions: video, single-channel, 9:46; mailbox, 18 x 50 x 25 cm; postcards, 10 x 15 cm
Concept and design: Azra Akšamija
Research: Sonja Srdanović (research, interview assistance); Dietmar Offenhuber (conceptual contributions); Sara Abosch, Zdenka Badovinac, Rick Halperin, Jeff Spurr, Mark Dike Delancey, Patrick Salland (interviewees)
Production: Azra Akšamija (text, postcard and icon design, mailbox), Evelyn Ting (graphic production), Ian Jakob Soroka (camera, photos), Matt Kushan (electronics)
Photographs: Azra Akšamija, Judith M. Daniels (Wolk Gallery installation photos), Ian Jakob Soroka
Also see: Akšamija, Azra. Museum Solidarity Lobby. Ljubljana: Museum of Modern Art, 2018.