past forward is a platform for artistic production and curatorial research.
The project starts up from looking at the process of creation of those research-based practices that deal with transmission of memory and fabrication of knowledge, and from considering the Internet as the new “theatre of memory”*, a space containing (almost) all the existing knowledge, as well as the tool of a ceaseless (over)production of knowledge.
Within the context of this hyper-production of contents, past forward acts as a “resonance chamber” of our current approach to knowledge – whether this is artistic or societal – and addresses the question of how the Internet may be a space for creation and display of these practices, how it can bring a further reading of their research process and how it can play as a mise en abîme of the overproduction of information.
past forward creates contents – commissioning online site-specific visual art projects (cartes blanches) or publishing critical essays and interviews with artists and curators (blow-up) – while opening windows on external subjects (research), symbolically weaving links between its own constituent elements and those materials that, within the Internet, similarly deal with memory and knowledge.
*Reflections about the “theatre of memory” refer to the work of the Venetian Renaissance philosopher Giulio Camillo (1480-1544) and explore the similarity between the "hyperlink" structure of the Internet and the systematisation of knowledge as imagined by Camillo. More information can be found here.
past forward is a project by curator francesca zappia.
contact:
francesca.zappia@past-forward.net
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