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15-30 October 2022
“ANCIENT FUTURES: All Belongs to Time” Exhibition; showcases 26 works of art, situated within the Istanbul Archeology Museum - to explore
fictional and speculative existences belonging to pending tomorrows.
Inspired by our cultural heritage, and informed by the past, the exhibition revolves around an imaginary excavation that takes place in the future to reveal new deities, mythologies, new ways of life, cities & civilizations.
What are the remnants of Today’s Society?
In the exhibition, which was placed in different halls of the Archeology Museum, digital screens, physical sculptures, and Augmented Reality works, came together with many perspectives. Bringing together important global artists such as Liam Young, Theo Triantafyllidis, David OReilly, Behnaz Farahi, and Jonathan Monaghan on digital screens, the exhibition also hosts the local creative minds of recent years such as Ecem Dilan Köse, Beryl Bilici, Kerim Safa, Kerim Dündar, Enes Güç, İdil Dursun. In addition, researchers and artists Memo Akten, Sarper Baran, and Pınar Yoldaş, who have achieved significant success abroad, are also part of this exhibition.
Eymen Aktel, Melih Cebi, Meltem Şahin, ha:ar, Enes Güç, Mesut Öztürk, Alper Derinboğaz, and Gaye Su Akyol are invited to the exhibition with their physical sculptures. Robin Yayla, Fuat Değirmenci, and Furkan Temir are involved with their AR works. In addition, all visitors had the opportunity to visit the virtual exhibition in the VR (Virtual Reality) corner established for the digital exhibition contributed by Memo Akten, Pınar Yoldaş, Kerim Dündar, and Ecem Dilan Köse.
The Story
ANCIENT FUTURES; is a theme park consisting of large-scale art installations and immersive experiences.
Positioned in old town Istanbul, xtopia re-imagines the Istanbul Archeology Museum as an archeological site from the future.
Way into the future we found/find a way to create a bubble where all diverse lifeforms could meet. This time-space portal generator
A fixed intersection bubble - a meeting point - so that civilizations could learn from each other and assist in times of crisis.
shared by differing timelines, parallel realities, and civilizations that every sentient community could come together.
In the year 3074, an extinction-level event took place. One of Planet Earth’s ‘time-space portal generator laboratories’ accidentally released an experimental gravitational liquid and triggered a chain reaction. The leaking plasma transformed/modified the fabric of all matter it came into contact with.
The plasma contained a hyper-dimensional compatibility upgrade code. It was designed to create a consolidated dynamic communication channel between universes, to form a fixed intersection bubble - a meeting point - so that civilizations could learn from each other and assist in times of crisis.
But the code malfunctioned.
It came in contact with other intelligent material and began re-formatting realities which brought destruction to various parallel universes and timelines - resulting in the disappearance(vanishing) of all matter.
Or at least this is what we think has happened..
We name this period; the Deep Forgetting.
No one remembers, and with all our technology we cannot travel back there - as if there is nothing there anymore.
No existence.
We have tried but could not detect any temporal or spatial coordinates.
Following an unknown or incalculable amount of time, suddenly some matter/life started to appear again. Few woke up from their Deep Forgetting intact, and most ended up either scattered around in different times and places, or simply just gone.
A curiously held together set of artifacts got teleported back in (our) time and arrived to Planet Earth year.
They appeared superimposed to a specific location. Displaced from their origins, and merged for the first time, the site resembles a chaotic collage of elements from diverse civilizations and timelines.
It stayed invisible/hidden until 2022 when the resurrection site was discovered.
We don’t know where the artifacts traveled from. They don’t seem to have come from the same time or location.
The artifacts seem to be attached-linked to each other - if they were intentionally chosen or random remains a mystery.
What we know; is they are the remnants of vanished/extinct civilizations.
At least this is all we have gathered so far
