“Nostalgia for the future”. An exhibition on desired futures

“Nostalgia de futuro: atravesando el colapso” (Nostalgia for the Future: Traversing Collapse) is an art exhibition (visual and digital) curated by Luca Carrubba and Eurídice Cabañes for La Capella in Barcelona between October 2025 and January 2026. It is an exhibition that, through the works of different artists, seeks to dialogue with the audience about the imaginaries of futures beyond current crises. The reflection of this curatorial work originates in the concept of future, understood as a place in dispute. Throughout the history of civilizations, the idea of future has been changing and adapting to each era. We live in a world where the futures envisioned are colonized by crisis scenarios. We assume the collapse as a certain horizon of our immediate future, as it slips between our fingers. We are orphans of future. The future is already a spectre that appears fleetingly to us to become visual and interactive files of the past. A future which is past, denied, closed and crushed in this present that does not open to other cultural| social political|ecological forms. Chronophagia is a useful concept to describe this process: a time that devours itself, condemned to the accelerated repetition of the instant, without sedimentation of thinking or horizon. Chronophagia is the acceleration of time in late capitalism, an acceleration that only produces a succession of moments and makes it difficult to articulate other temporalities.

It is in this social reconfiguration of time that a tension between memory and nostalgia arises. Nostalgia is a double-edged weapon. In its most reactionary form, nostalgia is the craving for an idealized past, a romantic evocation that overlooks the contradictions and inequalities of the time intended to be recovered. As Svetlana Boym points out in The Future of Nostalgia, this restorative nostalgia seeks to build myths of stability and harmony that are far from historical reality and respond only to the needs of the present. Thus, nostalgia becomes a tool of power, manipulated by political speeches that appeal to collective memories biased by society to justify authoritarian or exclusionary projects. Boym’s leap forward in relation to nostalgia is understanding it as a form of resistance when used to retrieve memories of a forgotten past. Reflexive nostalgia, according to the author, deconstructs the past by identifying subjects, stories, and events that have been marginalized, thereby rebuilding new avenues of possible futures. The rescue of the narrative of memory that involves an action of editing futures. In this case, critical nostalgia does not crave the past, but rather the restoration of horizons swept away by capitalist, colonial or technocratic progress. From a decolonial theory perspective, memory is not just a count of the past, but a field of negotiating possible identities, resistances and futures. Scholar and artist María Ignacia Ibarra argues that modernity imposed a historical narrative that marginalized non-Western epistemologies, displacing knowledge and cosmovisions in favour of a hegemonic account of progress. Reflexive nostalgia, then, can be understood as a strategy to recover – from a Western perspective – those possible worlds that were interrupted by colonization and necrocapitalism, opening the transformative possibility of the present. Memory is a space of conflict in which to tension the storytelling and radical imagination of desirable futures. So, nostalgia for the future as an oxymoron is not meant to glorify an idealized past, but to show the same aesthetic process that has been used to talk about the past and is now projected into the future.

To advance this curatorial research and ultimately select the pieces as well as their museography, three concepts have served as a conceptual guide. Before presenting the ideas, it is important to clarify that these concepts alone do not form a taxonomy that has been used in later stages for the museography work. Instead, the concepts are, to some extent, in dialogue with all selected pieces and create a shared discursive space. Therefore, the museography choice, led by Meritxell Ahicart, was not to separate by sections or enclosed spaces, but to direct the gaze through a formal and spatial relationship between the works in the exhibition.

Permacomputing: technologies that endure

Permacomputing embraces permaculture as a resilience and regenerativity framework for designing and using technology. It is a community of practice aimed at simplifying, opening black boxes, restoring and recombining obsolete hardware, and considering material and energy limits as aesthetics and politics. An example of this technological approach is the work Khipu | Computador Prehispánico Electrotextil (Khipu | Computador Prehispánico Electrotextil) by Constanza Piña (Figure 1). This sculpture evokes a future past, reinterpreting the knots of Andean khipus as an ecocomputer system. The work presents an uchronia: it imagines what might have happened if, instead of microchips, we had continued to develop this textile technology. The artist also relates her work to the concept of ch’ixi. Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui uses this term to examine the mestizo and the hybrid, without involving fusion or purity. In other words, ch’ixi does not seek to reconcile opposites or erase differences, but rather to coexist with contradiction. It is a computer that challenges colonial narratives and opens the possibility of more equitable technological futures. This approach is also reflected in Xavi Manzanares’ work, Autonomía de las Cosas (Autonomy of things) (Figure 2). The work proposes a sound space generated by two swarms of “electronic insects” engaging in a conversation via generative algorithms. This cutting-edge technology in the devices is not only low-cost but also low-energy and is built with free hardware and software. This digital craft prompts reflection on our relationship with the obsolete. The work Radiofonic Sculpture by Rabia Williams (Figure 3) is an on-site intervention during assembly days, engaging with the idea of technological obsolescence and putting it in dialogue with memory. The sculpture is a crystal radio, the simplest type of radio receiver that requires no power source, as it uses the energy from radio waves. The artist combines recycled and personal items to create an artefact that becomes a “technological fossil for a future past”.

Holobiont: symbiosis and codependence

A holobiont is defined as a multispecies consortium in which each organism is considered in terms of the components that make up the association between the host and its microbiota. Embodied in the phrase “we have never been individuals”, this concept departs from the idea of the modern individual, instead highlighting interdependent assemblies and linking to the idea of “sympoiesis” (make-with) proposed by Donna Haraway. Óscar Martín Correa’s BSM/MTHCv3 work (Figure 4) presents a bioartificial ecosystem in which an organism (the slime mould Physarum polycephalum) interacts with a sound AI. Together, they generate a soundscape that subverts traditional notions of authorship through a radical symbiosis between the organic and the algorithmic, echoing the ideas of biologist Lynn Margulis. Craftsmanship again appears in the technological fact. Each aspect of the work is handmade by the artist, demonstrating that digital technology also serves as a space for political agency (media appropriation) and aesthetic action (the interface visible on the screen in the work). The work MICROuniversos by artist Hamilton Mestizo Reyes (Figure 5) is rooted in a deep understanding of the holobiont, presenting aerial microscopic life as stellar landscapes. It gathers samples of aerial microorganisms from across the globe and cultivates them on Petri dishes, revealing the invisible worlds surrounding us. The samples from the Petri dishes are shown in a large-scale projection, which expands the relationship with the universe and the galaxies they seem to represent. Its juxtaposition of the small and the large underscores the interconnectedness of all scales of the universe. Closing the installation with a display of his portable biohacking lab , the artist establishes a connection with the living as an emerging form of collective creation and a platform for exploration.

For its part, the documentary Wiñotuay chi lewfü by María Ignacia Ibarra and Wladimir Riquelme (Figure 6) and the video game Atuel by Cooperativa Matajuego (Figure 7) converse as tributaries of the same stream, which speaks to us about memory, resistance and life in the rivers. Both assume the voice of water and the communities (human and non-human) that depend on it, highlighting the damages caused by extractivism and water mismanagement. If the documentary is a plea for community affirmation against extractivist destruction – inspired by the Mapuche concept of feeling-thinking or “sentipensar” with the waters – the game aims to provide agency – through extracts from real interviews with historians, biologists, geologists, and locals – by creating a polyphonic narrative about the river’s past, present and future. There is no future without bodies of water.

Compost: turning waste into opportunity

Compost serves as both a technique and a metaphor. As a practice, it transforms waste into nourishing land through heat, moisture, and microbial cycles. In the political realm, it dismantles illusions of significance of posthuman nature. From this emerges a language of distant relatives, alongside hybridizations and impure combinations, which are essential for the future, aligning with Haraway’s ideas.

In this speculative line, we find the work 2.8B420k by artist Andy Gracie (Figure 8). It functions as both a conceptual experiment and a real architectural proposal. He plans to construct a monument called El Objeto (The Object) to mark the end of life on Earth. The title refers to a distant future: in about 2.8 billion years, the Sun will be much brighter, and the average Earth temperature will reach 420 K (147 °C), ultimately destroying the last microbial remnants. The monument is designed to be triggered by a “material failure” at that temperature, as a performative gesture symbolising the transition from a biological to a postbiological planet. Without expecting witnesses, the monument exists for itself, for a Dead Earth, and for the universe. Using the same scientific approach as in palaeoclimatology experiments (but with reversed temporality), this piece prompts reflection on deep time, Earth’s geological eras, and the limits of imagination over time.

Upon completion of the exhibition, we find the activation of the work Secreto Ancestral VR by Francisca Silva and María José Díaz (Figure 9). It is a virtual reality project cocreated with members of the Q’ero Nation of Peru, the last descendants of the Incas. The film offers an immersive journey through the landscapes of the Vilcanota Mountains, where the q’eros dwell, to explore their cosmovision and their bond with nature.

Conclusion: echoes of the future

The imaginaries and stories activated during the curatorial process have contributed to the creation of two pieces that enrich the works the artists have generously shared. The first is a book written by Euridice Cabañes (Figure 10), which adopts a “choose your own adventure” format. This work encourages reader interaction by allowing selections of story sections: a science fiction proposal that, according to the curators’ intention, functions as a literary prequel to the exhibition. The second piece is a sound work, conceived by Luca Carrubba and Euridice Cabañes, and realized by sound artist Mathias Klenner (Figure 11). This piece, intended as an epilogue, invites a reappraisal of the entire exhibition and prompts us to cultivate a radical sensitivity that enables us to envisage times beyond contemporary crises. 

Recommended citation: CARRUBBA, Luca. “Nostalgia for the future”. An exhibition on desired futures. Mosaic [online], January 2026, no. 206. ISSN: 1696-3296. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7238/m.n206.2516