Condensing Vestiges of Past Futures in the Post-Peripheries: Artistic Engagement with Post-Colonial and Post-Authoritarian Contexts

Abstract

Abstract This article analyses the archival and historiographic turn in contemporary art that arose in response to post-authoritarian, post-communist, and post-crisis contexts. It references German philosopher Reinhart Koselleck's concept of Vergangene Zukunft (the past future), his idea of the multiplicity of historical times; Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe's notion of the time of entanglement; and Argentine-Mexican sociologist Néstor García Canclini's concept of multitemporal heterogeneity. Through an examination of recent hybridised artworks by Clemente Padín (Uruguay), Marek Sobczyk (Poland), Tamás Kaszás (Hungary), Kiluanji Kia Henda (Angola), and Michael Rakowitz (Iraq/United States), the article focuses on how these artists construct metahistorical narratives about domination and resistance from several images taken from high and popular cultures. These works respond to post-authoritarian trauma, socio-political crisis, and a general state of ideological confusion characteristic of world regions placed between major centres of power. Rather than referencing historical facts, the artists refer to popular culture, personal experiences, memories, expectations, and (unfulfilled) hopes or (uncompleted) past projects. Yet their aim in creating these artworks, mockuments, and artist's books is to construct not fictional narratives, but historical ones.