Our legacy for future archaeologists is increasingly narrowing down to two things: our waste and the Cloud. We will have filled up the oceans with plastic, contaminated the soil with plutonium and stored yottabytes of, by then unreadable data. Interestingly, this tense is called “Future Perfect”.
The fact that we only conceive of the future as a dystopia is because we see tomorrow as an extension of today. However, the future can be completely different. “Future Perfect” sets out to imagine this difference. Not by demanding disruption and constant (self-)reinvention, but by looking at the totality of relationships in which we find ourselves. Contrary to the capitalist assertion, not all destruction is in fact creative. Sometimes something is simply gone – resources, life-forms, options for the future.
In lectures, artist presentations, discussions and a large-scale expedition, “Future Perfect” looks into the material and immaterial legacy that needs to be preserved, discovered or finally realised. What will we have to have provided for, fought for, to ensure that the future will be a good one, if not perfect, beyond the horizon of our own time? What role is played by cultural memory, digitalisation, legal order and wealth, but also speculation, subversion and artistic practice? And what makes us even think that future generations will still care about our values?

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