From a distant future, Maarten Vanden Eynde trains his eye on the past – our current present. Future species will form an impression of today’s world based on what we leave behind. Certain buildings, objects and written sources will still exist, others will be excavated and researched. Some will be impossible to find and the missing information will be a source of conjecture. Our lifestyles, choices and principles will be mulled over, in much the same way that contemporary historians reflect on the past. Maarten Vanden Eynde’s artistic practice questions our current society from a possible future perspective, and the way in which we make choices today that influence the future.

Cave paintings, collections, footprints: remains of human presence offer an insight into the life of our predecessors. Stories are subsequently constructed on the basis of all the collected source material. And when this is lacking, historians delight in freely completing the gaps in the puzzle. Indeed, we look at history with a certain gaze and expectation, and it is tempting to project answers in the absence of clarity. For example, a patriarchal bias leads archaeologists to suggest that prehistoric biological men were hunters, while most researchers discount certain facts in this respect, or endlessly question them.¹ After Maarten Vanden Eynde broke a ceramic beaker in 2004 in Japan (Genetologic Research No. 18) and in so doing created a potential archaeological find, he decided to turn words into deeds by burying the most popular IKEA tea cup, as the most significant piece of crockery of our era, in the Roman forum (Preservation of IKEA tea-cup, 2005). A few years later, he let his imagination run wild when repairing an IKEA cup that had been broken in this way. He thought that the fragments would provide sufficient inspiration to allow a future archaeologist to assemble them into a true IKEA Vase (2011).

This series of artworks plays with the idea of an archaeological find. The majority of objects that are excavated were once buried beneath rubble by something like an earthquake or a volcanic eruption, and hence preserved. They were not deliberately conserved. In combination with all the objects that were consciously saved for the future, they form the basis for archaeological and historic research. As a result, organic materials that do not stand the test of time are often overlooked.² Perhaps the most valuable sources were therefore wiped out, and we overestimate the importance of those finds that we do have at our disposal. Today there is an even greater challenge for the preservation of knowledge via digital channels. Art historians who can currently still base their research on exchanges of letters between artists, will in the future be hindered by the transience of chat discussions and emails. The speed with which we switch from one channel to another and the fragility of digital archives are a future problem that should not be underestimated. In the work A Chain of Events (2020-2021) we see both organic materials and industrial objects that were utilised in human trade and communication. It starts with cotton thread and ends – temporarily at least – with wafer-thin fibreglass cables through which data is transported. It depicts a historical succession of global exchanges that run into and influence one another. Hence it represents a non-linear historical account in which clearly demarcated events are non-existent. Maarten Vanden Eynde thus questions the way in which we engage in historiography, because aside from all the coincidental finds that supplement the knowledge of the past, there is of course the conscious choice to record our history.

By writing history, humans try to direct the information that will survive them. An ingenious selection of information finds its way into books, and attempts will sometimes be made to destroy certain publications. We choose which messages we send into space on the Voyager Golden Record and which statues we place in the public domain. History books teach us the most important events, or at least what the authors consider to be essential. Moreover, it would be troublesome to explain the principles of conflicting parties on the losing side in such a way as to prompt understanding in the reader, and so factual information is also selected from a subjective point of view. The curriculum for schools is purportedly fixed, and yet is regularly adjusted as a result of growing insight. A great deal of knowledge is not retained because it is considered unimportant or is not even visible. Scant attention is paid to crafts today, for example, meaning that these disciplines are at risk of being lost. Collectives such as The Black Archives devote themselves to conserving source material relating to people of colour. That is to say, choices around archiving and knowledge sharing say a great deal about what is regarded as relevant by a society and what is not.

The blackboard green that has regularly served as a backdrop to Maarten Vanden Eynde’s works since the exhibition Digging up the Future (Mu.ZEE Ostend, BE, 2020-2021; La Kunsthalle Mulhouse, FR, 2022) thus refers to the role of knowledge and education. Material Matters (2018-2019) makes a case for knowledge sharing throughout the entire production chain: from the point that mining commences to the moment an end product is developed. Here too the artist plays with a formal language that catapults us into the classrooms. He collaborated with the artist Musasa, known for his educational painting style, and refers to old school maps. In reality, knowledge is less rigid than the way it is presented in the Western school system. The Lukasa, a kind of palm-sized memory aid, is an object that improves our receptiveness to new insights and yet builds on the knowledge that has already been acquired. Maarten Vanden Eynde made a series of works that allude to this instrument. Memory of Man (2022) mimics a Lukasa and combines different enlarged computer elements with scratches in the marble surface. Computers are massive game changers when it comes to memory and processing power. Lukasa allow more room for interpretation and development, and the scratches – alluding to cave paintings – also refer to historical and more receptive tools for knowledge transfer. In opening up his work, Maarten Vanden Eynde also plays with different ways of sharing information. In his monograph Digging for the Future, curator and editor Katerina Gregos provided an encyclopaedic overview while curator Nav Haq contributed a science fiction essay. The audio guide to the accompanying exhibition offered interpretations from climate scientists, decolonial thinkers and activist artists, and for his PhD at the University of Bergen Maarten Vanden Eynde wrote a classic scientific text with references to empirical literature. All these forms of knowledge sharing can exist side by side, be complementary, and question one another.

Central to Maarten Vanden Eynde’s work is this critical, open stance towards knowledge of the present, the past and the future. His gaze from a remote future helps him to question contemporary society. The knowledge that a distant descendant will study our lifestyles enables us to see both ourselves and contemporary society in a new light. We succeed in taking a little more distance and approaching our environment more critically. By zooming out, we see processes that are underway and changes that are taking place. Individual human concerns shift to the background, while other living species once again claim their role as protagonist and thus shake up assumed hierarchies: for example, coral is suffering from the presence of humans, yet the reefs are vital to the survival of marine life. Time is also transformed when subjected to a future gaze. The passage of a single human on Earth seems insignificant. What are impressive, however, are artistic, scientific and technological achievements and inventions. Humans have achieved a great deal in a short period. These achievements will have an immense impact on the future. We rarely ask ourselves what future species will think of the actions we undertake today, or whether these deeds will have major consequences for subsequent populations. Maarten Vanden Eynde both depicts the possible negative consequences of our behaviour and issues a wake-up call by pointing to the positive impact that humans can have. Not only do we write history, but we also make the future.

Ilse Roosens is a cura­tor cur­rent­ly wor­king at Mu.ZEE in Ostend (BE), the muse­um for modern and con­tem­po­ra­ry Belgian art. Post-colo­ni­al, geo­po­li­ti­cal, eco­fe­mi­nist and post-capi­ta­list topics lay the ground­work for her work both insi­de and out­si­de the muse­um. Ilse Roosens ques­ti­ons exis­ting power struc­tu­res and focu­ses on the soci­al res­pon­si­bi­li­ty of insti­tu­ti­ons, govern­ments and artists. Co-author­ship and polypho­ny are focal points of her wor­king ethic. She is acti­ve­ly rethin­king the for­mats for pre­sen­ting col­lec­ti­ons by expe­ri­men­ting with trans­his­to­ri­cal and trans­cul­tu­ral concepts.

At Mu.ZEE Ilse Roosens cura­ted exhi­bi­ti­ons such as ​‘Maarten Vanden Eynde — Digging up the Future’ (2021) together with Katerina Gregos, ​‘Wintrum Frod. Orla Barry & Els Dietvorst’ (2019), ​‘Frans Masereel and con­tem­po­ra­ry art: ima­ges of resis­tan­ce’ (2017) and ​‘Carsten Höller. Videoretrospective with Two Lightmachines’ (2016). She publis­hed seve­r­al cata­lo­gues and cura­ted dif­fe­rent public pro­gram­mes accom­pan­ying the exhi­bi­ti­ons. In 2018 she co-foun­ded the MEER cura­to­ri­al col­lec­ti­ve, focu­sing on artists wor­king with video and per­for­man­ce art. Prior to Mu.ZEE she wor­ked at S.M.A.K. Ghent and Extra City Kunsthal in Antwerp and as a free­lan­ce cura­tor and mediator.