Virtual Archive

More than any possible historical criticism that could be directed toward Nolan's Odyssey's, above all what it makes clear is a trend towards looking back. There remains an unwillingness to look forward and create images that look ahead, that are speculative, creative, ambitious and effectively new. We remain chained to what feels safe and familiar, draining old ideas, stories and texts. It is not simply about a consumerist attitude that reinforces a circularity of images and discourses, it is about a (forced) crisis of vision and the (in)ability to conjure and conceive of a different world. A new reality can only be substantiated if we are first able to imagine it, to conceive of it, to discuss it. We are faced with an active effort to enclose us within a loop, one sustained by the desire to consume history time and time again until it is gradually emptied of itself.