Emma Kay - The Future From Memory

The Future From Memory was a major new commission by British artist Emma Kay. The work took the form of a digitally animated text projection that described the future of the world, according to the artist's memory. The Future From Memory combined fact and fiction; the text that formed the work was culled from the collective domains of civilization. Any realm that described an idea of the future - from science to spirituality, culture to economics - was co-opted into Kay's vision. Realised with Flash animation software, Kay's commission at Chisenhale was a vast, rolling series of predictive packages, moving into the distance Star Wars-style. Far removed from sci-fi visions of cinematic grandeur, the work was realised through thoroughly minimal means, whilst negotiating the pros and cons of holo-entertainment, tissue regeneration and dodo-cloning. Kay's recent work has dealt with individual memory in a range of media and across a divergence of major subjects: The World From Memory was a series of hand drawn maps whilst The Bible From Memory was realised as a 7,000 word text. Shakespeare From Memory attempted the reconstruction of each of the writer's plays. Worldview, an 80,000-word text describing the history of the world, was also published in book form. The Future From Memory was Kay's most ambitious work to date. A vast, undending narrative loop, the work was inevitably incomplete, wholly subjective and inaccurate, and yet convincing through its authority and conviction. Pressetext

Emma Kay - The Future From Memory