Looped Futures

The Architecture of Cycles Closely bound to this idea is that of cycles. Cycles imply repetition, but never simple duplication; what returns is altered by what has already occurred. In The Order of Time, physicist Carlo Rovelli suggests that our perception
of a linear flow is a “blurred” perspective of a much more complex reality:

“We are stories, contained within the twenty complicated centimeters behind our eyes… oriented toward predicting events in the future, in a rather particular corner of this immense, chaotic universe.” (Carlo Rovelli, The Order of Time)

This exhibition explores the space where Looped Futures and cycles intersect: where movement unfolds through recurrence, and where repetition becomes a primary site of change. The works presented do not propose a linear narrative but a constellation of passages, material, conceptual, and temporal.

The Spiral of Contemporary Existence Looped Futures can be read as a condition of contemporary existence. We move
through overlapping technological and social systems that continuously loop back. Progress and regression coexist, much like Walter Benjamin’s “Angel of History,” who moves into the future while facing the past:

“Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet… This storm is what we call progress.” (Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History)
In this context, cycles appear not as closed circles, but as spirals. Materials are reused, and images are reworked. What initially seems familiar gradually becomes estranged. As Julia Cameron notes in The Artist’s Way, the spiral is the most accurate map of growth: “You will circle through some of the same issues over and over, each time at a different level… put [cyclical and linear time] together and you get a fourth metaphor: time is a spiral.” (Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way)

There is also an ecological dimension embedded in these works. Cyclical systems, growth and decay, are reminders of interdependence. Yet, what returns is never neutral; it carries traces and responsibilities. We are reminded of Jorge Luis Borges’s “Circular Ruins,” where the dreamer realizes he is merely another loop in a larger dream:
“Time is the thing I am made of. Time is a river that sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that tears me apart, but I am the tiger.” (Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths)
As an exhibition, Looped Futures and Cycles functions as an open structure. Visitors are invited to enter at any point, mirroring the very ideas it proposes. Meaning emerges gradually, through repetition and relation. The exhibition itself becomes a journey without a fixed destination, where what remains is not a conclusion, but a heightened awareness of transformation as an ongoing process.