SOPHIE BOWNES

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Cubitt Gallery and Studios 

July 15th 2017

 

If the ‘future imperfect’ were to exist in linguistics, it would be a verb tense which fuses the past, present and future. It would bring together the ‘future perfect’, which looks forwards to a situation with a predetermined ending, and the ‘imperfect’, referring to the potentially endless continuation of a past event.

The Future Imperfect presents Cubitt’s archive in this tense. Considering the site of the archive and the archival document, typically, as a static, boxed-away, conception of history, The Future Imperfect looks towards the future of these documents.

You are invited to reactivate documents from within the archive, using ‘state-of-the-art’ digital technology. By translating physical documents to digitised imitations, archiving in an age of rapid technological advancement is put to the test. Employees of the Bureau of Transmogrification will guide you in the process of shaping a possible future for Cubitt’s archive, which may result in an outcome less ideal than originally hoped...