Page 37 - The Future Belongs to No One. Eugenio Ampudia

political and economic corruption, environmental disasters and the power of the media.Today punk continues to be linked to anarchic, environmental, feminist and anti-globalisation causes that are absolutely on the rise.Which environment do you prefer: one of festive raucousness or one of calm for deep meditation?I almost prefer one of festive and relational calm for reflecting.Perhaps a setting of vampiresque encounters?They frighten me. They remind me of situations in which artists habitually find themselves with respect to politicians, institutions, the economic powers...Though we all drink from everyone and bloodshed leads to more bloodshed.Can we take that cloudy matter that intermittently surrounds several of your works to mean a signal of urgent mobilisation? Or simply routine steam dispersion? Or an allegory of the gas released by dead bodies in a cemetery?It’s smoke... smoke and steam are interesting matter. They’re both signals and matter of an action.What’s your opinion of the actions carried out in recent years by fundamentalist groups in the MiddleEast to destroy architectural sites and other artistic expressions regarded as treasures and world heritage?I hate it, without a doubt, what they’re destroying is the possibility of dialogue, of communication; while I understand how widely culture and the objects it generates or safeguards is used in taking a stance in politics and the media by forces of all kinds that have or attempt to hold power, I don’t share it.How useful to the world (and to the supposedly exceptional sphere of contemporary art) can microhistories or chronicles of forgotten and displaced human groups be?I don’t consider the sphere of contemporary art to be particularly exceptional; rather, it’s a prism for viewing the world, one of many vehicles of knowledge, meaning that it’s important for these microhistories to be present through this prism to provide other possible viewpoints. And providing different tools for knowledge can always be useful.It’s great that ‘the future belongs to no one’ YET! Who will its owners eventually be?We’re going back to Heraclites. The future changes each instant in the present. It changes course, speed, form, it changes appearance and changes hands.37 | EUGENIO AMPUDIA. THE FUTURE BELONGS TO NO ONE YET37 | EUGENIO AMPUDIA. THE FUTURE BELONGS TO NO ONE YET