Edgar Schmitz, “Trading in Brieftopia”
To shape and face the future without negotiating it with the past would simply be preposterous in most cases.
When the here and now is so marked by depletion and erasure that it starts trembling under the pressures of its excessive futures, it tends to strike new bargains with the past and bring the dead back into the shared spaces of now, before and after.
Most civilisations (have long had to) trade their futures with the claims of the dead, their gifts and demands.
So, which dead do we bring back, and what deals do we strike in Brieftopia?
Edgar Schmitz’s architectures, films, and soundtracks are concerned with developing modes of withdrawal, the dispersed materialities of the choreographic, and the temporal shapes of (in-)animacy.
Schmitz is the founder of the CHOREOGRAPHIC and ANIMATE ASSEMBLY research clusters, curates the Choreographic Devices exhibition series and directs the Art Research Programme at Goldsmiths, University of London.
With the support of the Ministry of Culture.