Memories of the Future

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Figures

Sara Bonner – Girl Acting Out: Revisiting the Fairy Tale Futures of Little Red Riding Hood and Snow White

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DEBORAH JAFFÉ

Preface

The examination of time, whether it be a story, design, artwork, invention or event, is important to propose a future. In the late eighteenth century, in the English Midlands, a group of friends exchanged ideas on the engineering, technological and industrial processes they were developing. They met once a month at full moon, giving the group, who were intent on changing the course of the future, the name the Lunar Society. In a time before electric lighting, the beam of the full moon guided them and the natural world was their time-keeper.

Their visions, and those of countless other women and men, were both speculative and practical usually to enhance a future and develop a modernity. The fluidity of time backwards and forwards, like the technology of the timepieces that have transformed its keeping, provide constant possibilities for both real and counterfactual interpretations. However, the natural world as time-keeper has now been displaced by the innovations of technology. While the inventor, engineer and designer focus on creating improvements, the storyteller and artist reflect on a former time to reinterpret it for the future. ← xiii | xiv →

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Acknowledgements

Firstly, we want to thank those who have contributed to this book, especially all the authors and artists who have given their time and dedication to make it possible. We are grateful to the following institutions: Chelsea College of Art, CCW Research Graduate School, University of the Arts, London; The Centre for the Study of Cultural Memory, Institute of Modern Language Research, University of London; Columbia University, The Department of Anthropology, New York; The Frick Art Reference Library, New York; The British Library, London; The Wiener Library, London; Chetham’s Library, Manchester; Jess Nevins at Lone Star College-Tomball, thank you for making a steam arm possible; Pace Gallery; Katie Paterson, Ingleby Gallery; and Josh Blackwell, Kate MacGarry Gallery.

Finally, thanks must go to Laurel Plapp and her team at Peter Lang for their support. ← xv | xvi →

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STEPHEN WILSON

Introduction

Memories of the Future is a widely used term for the understanding of future frameworks, propositions, predictions and approaches. Our preliminary discussions about the subject began five years ago. Since then the relevance of these discussions to the current instability and stability of a political and sustainable future have become even more pertinent and prescient than we could have envisaged at the outset. The book charts the contradictory and often complex ‘post progressive’ discourses in memory and futurity studies. Its twelve chapters are by authors from diverse fields who frame this specialist subject within four parts: ‘Part I: Memories of the Future: On Countervision’, ‘Part II: Intersections of Memory, Formative Experience and Learned Culture’, ‘Part III: The Reconditioning of Time’ and ‘Part IV: Future Permissions and Former Horizons’.