Heritage — Futures — Time Capsules: What does it mean to bring these terms together in this way? They activate opposing meanings, being associated with transience and metamorphosis and at the same time with the grounded-ness of constructed objects that strive towards permanence. Against this background, heritage is called upon to re-negotiate forms of preserving and wasting away, prospective memory and deliberate forgetting. What is at stake is the need for new conceptual, spatial, and operative frameworks for rethinking vulnerability and the struggle against impermanence and disposability.

To think through time capsules means reflecting on the role of anticipation and the limits inherent to any deterministic attempt to control the destinies of the world around us and the multiple entanglements with its inhabitants. Selecting, assembling, and burying a segment of our time to be unearthed by future generations entails editing a chosen inventory of evocative “items”, in the awareness of the impossibility of fully predicting how they might be received—if they will be received at all—in our inscrutable, open, embodied futures. Beyond the role of mere simulacra or mementoes of what today seems relevant for an uncertain tomorrow, how can these heritage “objects”, abstracted from their functions, actively engage with projections and prognostications of what is yet to come?

This lecture will take place in English within the context of the Bauhaus.Module "Heritage Futures - Time Capsule". To take place in person, please register at heritage@uni-weimar.de To take part online, please click here (Password: Time-Capsule-2022)