The Futures of the Pasts
BY Bull.Miletic

23.09.23 - 07.01.24

The exhibition The Futures of the Pasts by Bull.Miletic explores how the built environment can serve as material forms encapsulating past visions of the future.

For the bunkers of Regelbau 411, Bull.Miletic set up a site-specific installation in which the past, present, and future intersect in a complex cartographic exploration, continuously reshaped by the interplay of natural erosion and the shifting codes of our digital age.

Anchoring the exhibition is Venetie 1111100110, a work that bridges historical cartographic techniques and contemporary digital technologies. Using a 500-year-old map by Jacopo de’ Barbari as a point of departure, the work explores the ever-changing states of Venice — a city married to the sea and oscillating between visions of past glory and the dangers of future decay. In the flooded rooms of the bunker, a scattered view materializes, presenting a vision of the city as a changing archive, susceptible to digital decay, rising tides, and under the precarious pressure of modern-day tourism.

In the work Original Copie, neon phrases illuminate the inner chambers of the bunker—one bathed in red, the other in blue. Luminous declarations emerge as spectral residues of past visions of nostalgia and optimism, clashing with the bunker’s historical weight of human endeavor and folly.

The Futures of the Pasts extends an invitation to reflect on how Western knowledge systems navigate the complex and often contradictory pathways of historical consciousness, technological possibility, and environmental vulnerability. As a contemplation on the fate of times past and a vision of historical futures, the exhibition asks us to consider not just what we choose to preserve, but how our notions of the future are continuously shaped by the changing nature of past events.

Bull.Miletic, consisting of Synne T. Bull (NO) and Dragan Miletic (US) based in Oslo, operates at the intersection of art and science. They explore the relationships between modern perceptual paradigms and historical spatial technologies, often innovating new cinematographic apparatuses to unearth alternative media archaeological layers. The exhibition at Regelbau 411 is their first solo exhibition in Denmark.

Opening: 23 September 2023, 14:00-16:00.
Exhibition period: 23 September 2023 - 7 January 2024.
Opening hours: Every day 10-17. Admission is free.

The exhibition The Futures of the Pasts is curated by Simon Thykjær.

The exhibition is kindly supported by the Danish Art Foundation, Det Obelske Familiefond, Augustinus Fonden, Færchfonden, Knud Højgaards Fond, Lemvigh-Müller Fonden and Louis-Hansen Fonden.