Objects of Future Heritage

In contemporary tourism, heritage and history (the two big H’s) are the industry’s main attractors. Heritage either buildings or ruins lay as pure icons in a near unspoiled landscapes. Heritage envisions our lost Arcadia and are big hits in tourism.
The tourists attracted by these localities, sites and heritage museums are engulfed with the artefacts of times long past, presented with imagery of how the refound and excavated objects or artefacts were used. This is done with the aim to pass through the quality of these civilizations. Their richness or how laborious and prosperous life once has been.  Heritage is creating an appeal to our longings of these near sublime early civilisations thus awakening our imagination. Even wore so when the heritage objects are of pure Gold!  The contrast between the artistic quality of these sites, iconic remains and heritage buildings and the nowadays view of our contemporary environment cannot be bigger. This contrast evoke to us a question: What will be our legacy to this astonishing heritage?

For a people, who boost about their cultural heritage as having on their territory the first stone erected buildings of all human history, the Maltese still have at least one coralline lime stone in their stomach. They cannot stop building even when there is no purpose to it. If you think this is a pain, you haven’t seen anything yet because nowadays Maltese have a problem with waste deposing too. As you walk through the Maltese countryside or through The Maltese towns, you see the Maltese spilling waste everywhere. Maltese people and Maltese youngsters litter, litter anything anywhere.

VanGerven|VanRijnerk’s contemporary contribution? 
Imagine, when in 2512 or even in a thousand years from now, archaeological research is made to excavate our contemporary times? What findings will they make? What common opinion will prevail out of these findings and how will we be portrayed by these future archaeologists?
Taking a hike through the country side, we can already imagine what their findings will be, seeing the spills and littered garbage laying around in trenches and unused corners of agricultural lands. Noticing the low artistic expression of the contemporary housing and apartment blocks it would not surprise us, if they would not praise the architecture developments for its beauty.

Golden Abundance
Our nowadays lives look to be totally controlled by the NOW and fuelled by the parable of; “Living a life in (times of) abundance, haunted by an idea of scarcity, fed on a never silenced want”. Gold has been a valuable and highly sought-after precious metal for coinage, jewelry, and other arts, long since before the beginning of recorded-history. Gold has been widely used throughout the world as a vehicle for monetary exchange. All this inspired us to create new
 “Objects of Future Heritage”. New artefacts, created out of found objects, from the spills in the country side. These turned into gold coated artefacts, left un-deliberately laying in the countryside were the former litter was found. To do so as imaginary pointers to pin point this strange controversy in behaviour, which will cost at least two times money. One for the efforts made presenting this long time past in imaginary settings, settings of the lost Arcadia to attract tourism and two, to reverse the spoiling on the same time of the now of our environment and nature, by the continuous dumping of waist and not in use anymore objects and equipments which are bound to become the archaeological findings of the future.

Dumping is apparently just as easily as buying the new convenient goods in a store around the corner. This behaviour fuels us to set the Maltese situation as an example, because if you think this applies only to the Maltese, you haven’t seen nothing yet. Littering and waste dumping is a fast growing and costly development in our contemporary world.

New objects of desire and a tribute to
As artists we would like to ‘set fire’ to this destructive habit of waste deposal in the countryside, endangering the natural quality and bio-diversity of our environment. That’s why our project directly focusses on the littering behavior. The project “Objects of Future Heritage aims to turns waste dumping into signposting our Future Heritage.