Summary

100

Futurity

Fall 2020

This hundredth issue explores the theme of futurism, which offers new avenues for thinking about a more positive continuation of the world outside the traditional schemes of critical utopianism. Whereas according to our chronological way of conceiving time, the past would influence the present and the latter would act on the future, futurity proposes that the future we anticipate determines our present actions. Thus the future that we imagine would act directly on the present by shaping these actions. The notion of futurity can also be understood as a form of reparation inscribed in a decolonial perspective. Practices such as Afrofuturism and Indigenous Futurism, which specifically target these issues, are a focus of reflections on futurity. We also discover works that go beyond time frames, combining traditional knowledge and technology, ancestral myths and speculative fiction, works that are resolutely critical and committed to the future.

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Current Issue

Water

We now face a global water crisis. Warning signs are flashing everywhere about the increased desertification of the Earth, the industrial pollution of water resources, and the over-exploitation of aquifers. Faced with such a bleak portrait and the fact that environmental and humanitarian challenges are dependent on economic issues and interlinked policies, which are framed by complex laws, the influence of art is relatively modest. Nevertheless, alongside civic actions that we should actively do, artists can give back to water its symbolic and sacred value. Taking a poetical approach to water, the artists and theorists in this issue navigate between aesthetic forms, activist actions, and metaphor-rich analytical thinking. Adopting a resolutely critical perspective, the articles refer to artworks that try to raise awareness about water pollution and climate issues, envisage a restorative justice, and offer new horizons of hope.

Cover: Hannah Rowan
Vessels of Touch, 2021.
Photo: courtesy of the artist & C+N Gallery CANEPANERI, Milan

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