This film seeks to question the unidirectionality of linear time. The idea of people moving forward through time is intrinsically connected with the colonial view of humans going from a state of barbarism to modern and civilized. When we watched “The Last Angel of History,” a film by John Akomfrah, I began to question the idea that only the past and present could affect the future. By jumping back and forth through time, Akomfrah shows that the future is able to reframe and shape our past. The film that I created attempts to show a normalcy around the traveller who is moving backwards in time by depicting them in the same way as the traveler moving forwards in time.
In the beginning of the semester, we read Keller Easterling’s book “Medium Design: Knowing How to Work on the World.” In the text she advocates for a subversion of the oppressive systems surrounding us through interplay, or the understanding of how different things relate to each other. Many people fall into two camps when thinking about the future. In one camp are those that see technology as inevitable. Other people believe that we need to go back to the way that things were in the past. Both of these types of thinking fall into the idea of linear progress and decline. My film is trying to escape this binary by implying that while the key to imagining new futures may be in the past, we should not idolize the past as something that we should return to.
In the film I imagined that a dialogue may have taken place when the two travelers converged in our present time. The dialogue may have gone something like this:
“What does my future look like?” asked the person moving backwards in time.
“Depends on how far you walk,” said the person moving forwards in time.
“If you walk a bit further the cameras and scooters will disappear from the streets. A little further and the high rises will disappear. Even further and the grid will disappear. Even further and colonization will disappear. Even further and people will disappear.”
The person moving forwards in time then asked, “What will my future look like?”
The person moving backwards in time said “The same as my future I suppose.”
