The Future from Memory is the eighteenth instalment of roughly 88 science fiction-related exhibitions and projects produced by the Or Gallery. The series generally eschews technological aspects of the genre in favour of works that carry more subtly speculative and social qualities, and deal with disjunctures in time or perception.

This exhibition takes its name from London artist Emma Kay’s contribution to the show, The Future from Memory (2001). Kay’s work is a chronology of the earth, beginning in the 21st century, describing future events as recalled by the artist from various science fiction novels, films, and other popular projections on the future. This subjective forecast of the earth’s development and ultimate demise is presented as a large video projection, black text scrolling from the bottom of a white frame, up and away from the viewer in a manner similar to the opening credits of George Lucas’s Star Wars (1977). Other works in the exhibition touch on similar concerns of human subjectivity and narrative. Allison Hrabluik’s Abet (2012) is informed, in part, by literary sources such as Edwin A. Abbott’s 1884 satirical novella Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. The work is a simple animation developed by manipulating two abstract photographs of reflections on the artist’s glass coffee table. The animations are set to a sparse soundtrack composed for the work by Andrea Young. Lastly, Elizabeth Zvonar’s Universal and Timeslip (2012) collages incorporate feminist concerns around the body. In once case wryly humorous and in the other instance strangely disturbing.