The Archive to Come

Telematic

San Francisco | California | USA

Oct 22, 2020 - Dec 17, 2020

As an outgrowth of Carla Gannis鈥� wwwunderkammer, Telematic Media Arts is pleased to present, The Archive to Come, an exhibition 鈥� both on-line and in the gallery 鈥� of short time-based works that address questions of loss, memorialization, crisis, and re-invention, through the lens of contemporary networked culture and digital media.

The current crises we confront raise fundamental questions about what we value and want to preserve as we work to recover from their ravages and build for the future. How will we memorialize those whose lives have been lost? What could do justice to the fact that so many have died needlessly, as a result of government inaction and political maneuvering, or worse, as victims of racist terror and state violence? How can we redress the unequal distribution of suffering and work to dismantle systems of oppression? What histories demand to be foregrounded and what legacies should be left behind? What have we carried with us as we鈥檝e withdrawn into isolation and emerged in protest? What are the sources of precariousness and resilience in our personal and collective constitutions? What kinds of work do we honor as essential? What do we need to preserve our sense of well-being? What novel modes being and relating have we developed to maintain our social connections? What do we hope for the future?

These are questions of the archive, which both founds and sustains the authority of discourses, institutions, and practices. They concern the construction of memory, knowledge, experience, and power; and they present themselves now, amidst these crises, as both problems and possibilities: revelations of the previously unconscious contradictions in our way of doing things, as well as opportunities to re-orient our attunement to the world.