Future Artifacts #04 Sculpture

The series of sculptures by Paul Segers and Ajla R. Steinvåg (Class of Outcasts) collected under the title: Future Artifacts started in 2014. The idea behind the series is quite simple as the title suggests: the sculptures are conceived and executed as future artefacts. Objects that can be found in a distant future and, like real artefacts, should tell something about the era in which we currently live. Just as good science fiction is always a reflection on things that are happening in the present. Segers realised that judging an era and human actions in it is always easier in retrospect, with the filter of time and distance to clarify the perspective. With these sculptures he tries to circumvent time, as it were, by placing us as viewers in that future, looking at the present. At the same time, the artefacts are actually artificial, and Segers & Steinvåg suggest that history, or our (future) idea of it, can be changed or influenced. The first two series of artefacts mainly focused on technology in combination with biological life forms: they refer to the cyborg, the high-tech biomedical industry and the consequences of far-reaching interventions in the body. The last series of artefacts, subtitled The Perfect Crime, are made by Paul Segers and focus more specifically on using drones to increase ourselves and our military power. The so-called long arm, but then an 'invisible' variant.