Memory Is The Future in Reverse
A conversation between Johan Grimonprez and the author Tom McCarthy
Moderated by Matthias Bruhn

Tue, 18.11.2025, 18:00
Atrium 8+9, 1st FL, Useum
Admission free

The collaborations between artist and filmmaker Johan Grimonprez and novelist Tom McCarthy—most notably in the film »Double Take« (2009) and the short »From Satin Island« (2015)—represent fascinating intersections of literary experimentation and visual artistry. Whether through the cinematic déjà vu of Alfred Hitchcock meeting his double or a poetic, abstract reflection on catastrophe and identity, the two construct deeply layered works that explore themes of doubling, our present media-dystopia, existential serendipity, and the traumatic underpinnings of modern life.

In their conversation Johan Grimonprez and Tom McCarthy will make sparking connections between what they are both currently working on, forming a multi layered dialog—jumping from Greek tragedy to Modern advertisements, from Hitchcock to Freud, and reflect on archival reels as glitches in memory to bring up daunting questions such as: who makes history? Could memory be pre-emptive? In fact, is memory the future in reverse or is it that Imagination is the past fast forward?

The event will be moderated by Matthias Bruhn, Professor of Art Studies and Media Theory at Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design (HfG).

Tom McCarthy is a novelist whose work has been translated into more than twenty languages and adapted for cinema, theatre and radio. In 2013 he was awarded the inaugural Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction. His first novel, Remainder, won the 2008 Believer Book Award; his third, C, was a 2010 Booker Prize finalist, as was his fourth, Satin Island, in 2015. He is also author of the study Tintin and the Secret of Literature, and of the essay collection Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish. His latest novel, The Making of Incarnation, was published in 2021.

McCarthy has held Visiting Professorships at the Royal College of Art London, Columbia University New York and Städelschule Frankfurt. Since 2022 he has held the position of Miller Scholar at the Santa Fe Institute New Mexico. In 2019 he guest-curated the exhibition ‘Empty House of the Stare’ at London’s Whitechapel Gallery, and in 2022 a major exhibition, ‘Holding Pattern’, in Kunstnernes Hus Oslo, responding to the art institute’s invitation to explore the themes and motifs of his work. Born in Scotland, he is now a Swedish citizen, and lives in Berlin.

Who owns our imagination in a world of existential vertigo where truth has become a shipwrecked refugee? Is it the storyteller who can contain contradictions, who can slip between the languages we have been given to become a time-traveler of the imagination? Johan Grimonprez’s critically acclaimed work dances on the borders of theory and practice, between art and cinema, beyond the dualisms of documentary and fiction, other and self, mind and brain to weave new pathways and stories, emphasizing a multiplicity of realities. Informed by an archeology of present-day media, his work depicts intimate stories that brush up against the bigger picture of globalization. It questions our collective imagination and the contemporary sublime, one framed by a fear industry that has infected political and social dialogue.

Grimonprez’s curatorial projects have been exhibited at museums worldwide, including the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; and MoMA. His works are in the collections of Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa; and Tate Modern, London. His artwork is represented by the Sean Kelly Gallery (New York).

He lectured widely, among others at the University de Saint-Denis (Paris 8), Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics; Tate Modern; MoMA (New York); Columbia University; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); the Parliament of Bodies of Documenta 14, and he participated in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, and currently lectures at School of Art HOGENT/KASK , Ghent.

More info via: https://johangrimonprez.be/main/home.html