Ashes to Ashes 

2024-2025
Exhibited as part of Ghosts of Futures Past
Garage Rotterdam

Photos: Antoni Czarczyński

This bookshelf approaches ghosts from different perspectives and through voices of numerous authors who — just like mediums — translate the spectral tales. The questions that the publications on this bookshelf shift in between different moments on the continuum of temporality: excavating tales of the past, digging in the weirdness of the present and dreaming up scenarios of the future. In all of these different cases the authors see reality as permeable, influenced by  "futures that failed to happen”, the histories of the past that shape the present and the constant struggle over the not-yet.

Throughout the different texts the figure of the ghost takes various forms and functions as an ally, a cautionary tale, an ancestral chronicler, a shape-shifter tailored for the rules of the digital age, a guardian spirit in the times of contemporary difficulties and the haunting voice of the future. The bookshelf is set up with elements of an altar and embodies the idea that in the world of the living there has to persist a space which serves as a bridge to the voices of beyond. The visitors are invited to interact with the bookshelf, read, skim through, dig around and uncover the otherworldly vail.

With works of: Dorin Budușan, Federico Campagna, Mark Fisher, Errant Journal, Pula Markkanen, Christopher Partridge, Simulacrum, The Future Of, Toran Wolstencroft.

Exhibited with additional public programme of Ashes to Ashes including workshops, presentations and lectures related to the themes of hauntology.