Vernacular monument II: Landscape of thorns (The past of the future)

What will be left behind? Could you imagine the incidence of ephemerality of material things and ideas, if they are not spread widely? What will our descendants admire as vintage? Which medium will connect us and the future? For our generation, photography played the key role. Will photography in the future be as important as it was? Will digitalization defile us from our own memories?

A movie about nuclear waste disposal was filmed, titled Into eternity by Michael Madsen. In a remote part of Finland a company is building an underground high radioactive waste disposal, that will need to be sealed for 100.000 years for radiation level to decrease enough that humans will survive, if exposed to radiation. The primary idea of Finish engineers was to simply hide the disposal and hope that future civilization would not dig into it. Second solution was a landscape of concrete thorns that would warn people to stay away for 100.000 years. That is more than ten times then the oldest known structure in the world.

For more then ten years in Slovenia, shopping malls are the most impressive structures in terms of it’s area. That is just a fact and facts aren’t important. The most important thing is to understand the way how shopping malls affected our way of living. Do not stick with bare facts, explore!

What heritage is the most important for you? For example: old abandoned farmhouses, museums, natural heritage, intellectual heritage, landscape? What do you think will remain and in what form? What is the state of heritage in post-modern world?

The first part of the project was to be constructed as a theoretical one. Mere thesis and theories will be presented as a reminder of non-stop developing environment and how it reflects on us and our way of defining the temporal variability. The second part will be exclusively visual exploration.

All of this questions and directives might help you and guide you while creating an entry for Vernacular monument magazine issue II. We encourage you to create articles, photo essays, photos, drawings, strips, fiction stories, etc. And submit them for the magazine!

Deadline for your submissions is 1. 8. 2012. Send us your texts in .doc, photos, drawings, and visual material in .jpg (maximum longer side 700px, .jpg, high qual.), also be ready to send us high resolution, in case your project is selected. Send to: enarolafilma (at) yahoo.com

Also include your artist statement and CV. If any editorial help or help with the project is needed, feel free to contact us at any times.  

Publication will be printed in low edition. This is a non-commercial project! Magazine will be out in 15. 8. 2012.

image by Aljaž Celarc, Post-ruins of Illyrian defensive wall

“This is one of the most important archaeological sites in Slovenia, Virski cvinger. 1300 years B.C. Illyrians populated this area. 600 years B.C. settlement Virski cvinger with it’s 1700 inhabitants was larger as Troy at that time. Surrounded with thick defensive wall settlement covered 800 x 400m on the top of a small hill near Stična. What can bee seen today are the remainders of the defensive wall and more than a hundred burial grounds, also known as mounds. Illyrian civilization descended with arrival of Kelts 300 years B.C.”