The work "Images From Past Future" by HfG students Rayna Teneva and Mustafa Emin Büyükcoşkun was selected for the 39th EVA International Biennial of Contemporary Art and shown in Limerick, Ireland. It was exhibited from September 24 to November 14, 2021.
A new variant of the installation will first be shown at the Book Launch event of "10%. Concerning the Image Archive of a Nuclear Research Center", which will take place on 30.11 at the HfG.
Images From Past Future
In 1956 north of the city of Karlsruhe Germany built its first nuclear research center. For over 50 years the activities of the center were documented when throughout the 1970s, during the growing anti-nuclear mass movements in West Germany, the nuclear center adopted a new communication strategy and started producing propaganda videos to ensure the public about their safe future.
Büyükcoşkun and Teneva's new work Images from Past Future investigates the archive of this nuclear center. Focusing on commissioned films that showed possible catastrophes, failures, and accidents, the work suggests that the language of cinema used to translate the complexity of the nuclear promise as a safe and bright future actually delivered a prophetic message-the image of the [now]past was to become the future realities of Tschernobyl, Fukushima and the attacks to World Trade Center.
Instead of repeating the anti-nuclear discourse -adopted and executed by German political authorities nowadays-the work studies the ruptures and continuities in the visual language. Through the revoicing of the archives, the recollections of the actors who were behind the films, and the correspondence between the artists, Images from Past Future reveals the propaganda and truth-making processes visible at the age of post-truth. Can a living archive help us to position ourselves at the uncanny present? How would a conversation with ghosts of the past be possible?
with the support of Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design, Heinrich-Hertz-Gesellschaft, Kulturbüro, city of Karlsruhe
Supervised by Prof. Susanne Kriemann, Prof. João Tabarra
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Rayna Teneva graduated in photography at NATFA, Sofia, Bulgaria and media arts at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design. She works with found footage, personal and public archives, and documental narratives speculating on themes such as the construction of identity, memory and future predictions. Her work is process-oriented and often includes performative and socially inclusive practices. She is a co-founder of the online video platform Bureau Artrecord.
Mustafa Emin Büyükcoşkun is an artist and filmmaker who lives and works in Karlsruhe and Istanbul. His work focuses on the agency and the potentiality of truth-making of the medias, particularly of sound. He studied history at Bogaziçi University and media arts at Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design. After working as a director and assistant in film, his current practice mediates still and moving images, deconstructing meta-narratives and decolonizing historiographical practices. He is currently working on a project about the soundscapes in Kurdish cinema. His latest film, Set Off, premiered at Ji.hlava IDFF in 2019.
