Preservation of the Future, Delhi, 2081 tries to remember what might have been for the research audience who themselves see their own story. Archivists around the world examined items in our present and determined their new past, all in one day, Saturday, March 2, 2081.

Index Number: 0504 2107
Date of entry: 03/20/2061
Location: Exit Ramp 29, Highway 101, Japan
Size: spherical solid and ring with approximate radius of 22mm
Date of manufacture: 2019
Notes: Fragment of a Netsuke. An ivory hare‘s ruby eye. Ludwig Engel

Index Number: 0520-2020
Date of entry: 05/22/2020
Location: mud hole in Socialist Republic of Europe
Size: 18 cm
Date of manufacture: 2055
Notes: High-sec key on key ring with two non-descript tags. Ludwig Engel

Date of entry: 03/20/2069
Location: Reykjavik, ISLAND
Size: Triangular Shape of length of approximately 2.5cm, and Cylinder of length of 8.5cm
Date of manufacture: 2067
Notes: INTREX‘ self-optimization plug; Sanskrit language/culture extension package,
Ludwig Engel

Index Number: 0526-2309
Date of entry: 11/25/2066
Location: Nantes, Loire-Atlantique, Pays-de-la-Loire, France Jupiter 47° 13‘ 0“ North, 1° 33‘ 0“ West
Date of manufacture: before 2073
Notes: ragment of Jupiter; retrieved by Exoplanet Explorer ‚Kepler-20e‘ Ludwig Engel

Index Number: 0403 2710
Date of entry: 09/12/2054
Location: Holy Lands, Tibetan Republic, China
Size: approximately 6cm
Date of manufacture: 2035
Notes: Ticket for Band-Aid Music Festival Dalian China.
Ludwig Engel

Location: 33°43′N,73°04′E
Size: 100 mm x 60 mm x 7 mm
Date of manufacture: approx. 2022
Notes: The whistle hung around her neck and swung like a pendulum ticking off time until it fell into the grass. I found it resting in a stand of poppies, six new stems, wide, with dandelion fur, stitched into a fabric of yellow draped over burnt packed earth, holding above a set of glowing and burning lanterns, and floating fragile as butterfly wings. The breeze of a white horse‘s leg passed by, wrinkling the petals at their edges and they glowed like embers swollen by bellows, dancing like anemones with their tender lips opening in a slient cadence against the passing tide.
Hugh Stockton

Index Number: 0535 2032
Date of entry: 04/01/2032
Location: Lower Saxony, Northern Kingdom, Developed Lands
Size: square with edges of approximately 30cm and rectangular solid with dimensions of 1cm by 5cm.
Date of manufacture: 2024
The activities of the British Library for Development Studies are well documented, a covert operation set up by ultra nationalists to promote critical re inventions of the 20th century decline of the former UK in part by destroying evidence incompatible with their world view. It is not clear why this device is so clearly labelled, perhaps because the agency adopted the view it was best to “hide in plain sight”. Technically the device belongs to a transitional period during which the physical carrying of digital data seemed less absurd than it does today. Bob Last

Index Number: 0527 2013
Date of entry: 05/02/2020
Location: Parcel 65, Chamber 111, Ditch 7.2
Date of manufacture: 2025
Notes: this is an Emotimometer manufactured in Weisbaden in 2015, modelled on the classic 20th century mercury thermometer. The Emotimeter purported to measure the intensity of ambient radio frequency radiation surrounding the user and the consequent emotional damage. The liquid inside in fact just responded to the level of static electricity generated by the user, as this was likely to be higher in heightened emotional states a false correlation appeared.. Before the technology was exposed as a fraud its use became irrelevant on the introduction of sub atomic data transport and the disappearance of radio frequency communications. Nonetheless the illusory emotional feedback could be addictive and the devices were manufactured up until circa 2025. Bob Last

Index Number: 0408 2023
Date of entry: 05/03/2033
Location: Third penninsula
Size: 12x10x6 cm
Date of manufacture: 2035
This item is an unused sex toy mass produced at the peak of what we now know of as the Korean Bubble. The rotating blades could be used to generate stimulation in a number of ways, whilst the device is skinned as military vehicle of the time thus encoding power relations in the moment of sexual stimulation. It is not very old having been produced in 2035 in a factory in the former DMZ between North and South Korea. Bob Last

Index Number: 0507-2315
Date of entry: 02/03/2076
Location: Hebron, Boone County Kentucky 39°3′57′′N 84°42′4′′W
Date of manufacture: approx. 2069
this blue cylinder is of a type most often found in former religious buildings known as “Atelier”, here mendicants attempted to use scavenged writing implements to recapture the lost art of physical mark making, entire Atelier’s would be dedicated to laborious hand drawn reproductions of digital captures of iconic “Graffiti” or “Tags”. Mendicants saw themselves as continuing a medieval tradition of illustrating holy manuscripts. This particular cylinder is not especially rare as the “Blue” Atelier which hoped to move its members closer to the sky was for a brief period a global phenomenon. None of the actual hand drawn reproductions have survived. Bob Last

Index Number: 0515-2000
Date of entry: 7.4.2055
Location: Azerbaijan
Size: 6.5cm
Date of manufacture: 1992
Notes: To me, this thing looks priceless, but I know, from my research, that this bracelet was once of absolutely no value, aside from its extreme kitschiness, that it was worn by “rednecks” and “dead end kids” and could be bought for what is now .005 Yuan, a laughable amount. An image comes to me, unbidden, of three teenagers in a red pick up truck at sunset, heading down the Wulumuqi Highway, flirting, shouting over the noise of the tires, the engine—one of the girls is wearing this bracelet. Hardly responsible archiving, to write your own association, the fragment of a dream you had this morning. Nonetheless, it is now documented. old friend

Index Number: 0412-2101
Date of entry: 11/23/2040
Location: Creative Bakery 2.0 / 52° 22′ N, 9° 44′ O
Size: 85 mm x 45 mm x 20 mm
Date of manufacture: 11/22/2050
Notes: The object comes from a priestess of the post-Miasma Shining Goddess cult. They believe the rays of the sun and moon circle around adepts heads like halos and give them the power to read the minds of others. Victoria Nelson

Index Number: 0535 2032
Date of entry: 04/01/2032
Location: Developed Lands
Date of manufacture: 2024
Notes: Primitive signs. Representation of the uncertainty principle, and motion detectors. Used as illustrative model in schools in the late thirties and forties of our century. Obsolete. Kerim Seiler

Index Number: 0404-2034
Date of entry: April 8 / 2072
Location: 234 Meter in the air at 52° 5′ N, 23° 42′ O
Size: 142 mm x 110 mm x 0.8mm
Date of manufacture: approx. 2047
Notes: In the 2040s, the years following the collision of the asteroid Apophis with earth on April 13, 2036 (commonly known as A-Day), the surviving inhabitants of Delhi developed a memorial ritual to commemorate the destroyed city and the victims of the impact. This ritual was founded on the discovery of the mobility card at hand, one of the few intact relicts found under the city’s rubble. The RFID chip of the card still contained the records of its owner’s daily route through the city, up to the day of the fatal impact. Even though none of the bus stops, metro stations or any of Delhi’s landmarks had survived – the asteroid having flattened 99% of the city – a growing number of people met each April 13 and spent the day retracing the anonymous commuter’s trajectories. Meeting first at Peeragarhi, they walked along the Green Line to what used to be Inderlok Metro Station and “changed” to the Red Line, continuing eastwards along the ruins to the no longer existent Tis Hazari. With a short detour south to Sadar Bazar they would then turn around and retrace their steps along the imaginary tracks until they had reached the anonymous commuter’s home in Peeragarhi once again. Eva Wilson

Index Number: 0406-2005
Date of entry: 11/12/2069
Location: Grand Canyon
Size: 4cm
Date of manufacture: 2069
Notes: Talisman (people believed that energy meant power)
Robot Makeup. This must be robot makeup, right? This was the year irony reached its heights, when everything was an inside joke. “Chromatic Pitch Instrument” “Pyramid” “Made in”— everything written on the outside– these were only clues to what it definitely was NOT. All we could do was look at the thing and draw our own conclusions: the boxy shape, the clasp, the utilitarian aesthetic. Robots were crazy about all that shit. That was the year robots wanted to look like robots, and humans made holes in their cheeks using robot-blush, made of silver polish. Ludwig Engel

Date of entry: 01/01/2006
Location: USA34° 32′ N, 69° 10′ O
Size: 60 mm x 90 mm x 11 mm
Date of manufacture: approx. 2046
Notes: Safety Matches Inc.‘s SSKIA (‚Sharp Shooter‘s Kit for Instant Assassinations‘) Ludwig Engel

Index Number: 0509-2080
Date of entry: 08/19/2080
Location: Puerto Soledad, 51°42′S , 57°51′O
Size: XXS
Date of Entry: 10/11/2021
Description: City Kit
This photograph is deceptive. The blue background is sky, and a helicopter crane is out of shot. The helicopter crane is carrying a massive bag by its yellow electromagnet. There is a master plan stitched onto the bag. The black circles are round parks, the red circles are round towers, and the blue stitching is a canal. Inside the bag are the building materials, which have been factory-packed, and are now on their way to a lunar site.
OR
Osmia ribifloris coccinellidae
This is the world‘s newest, and smallest, species of water insect. It was unexpectedly bred by a group of scientists in East Timor, laboratory-cultivated and grown to full-size in just three days. The animal is a mongrel – a cross between the honey bee and the ladybird. Osmia ribifloris coccinellidae have distinctive pearl-like yellow antennae, and hundreds of black, red, and blue pollen baskets all over their almost-orthogonal bodies. The wax produced and secreted from mirror glands on the inner sides of the sternites on their abdomens has been shown to cure a host of human diseases. Jack Hogan

Index Number: 0522-2060
Date of entry: 8.8.2035
Location: Georgia Size: 5cm
Date of manufacture: 2035
Notes: The year before the men were excluded was when things really got phallic. Penis- shaped kids’ cereal, dick-shaped snowmen, every cloud shaped like you-know-what. Psychoanalysts went out of business, the subtext of everyone’s dream was clear. Later, huddled in cellars, under dripping bus stations, trying to keep one another warm, the men agreed things had gone too far. That perhaps if they had abstained from that final thrust, no pun intended, they would have remained on top, no pun intended. Regardless, witnessing this object, a flash of nostalgia for the Other private part, no longer hidden in underwear, but objectified and demeaned. As I write, a flash of regret, of apology. Store it away. new friend

Index Number: 0536-2719
Date of entry: 7/02/2058
Location: Trash Can, Apartment 89, 52° 31′ N, 13° 24′ O
Size: 45 mm x 11 mm x 11 mm
Date of manufacture: approx. 2012
Notes: The earring originally belonged to the mayor‘s daughter‘s best friend Sophy. When Ralf found it on the playground he was 7. He kept in his special box for another 8 years and gave to his first girlfriend. She wore it during her teenage years in her right ear. She gave it to her goddaughter many years later during her law exam for good luck. Martin K.

Index Number: 0534 2820
Date of entry: 06/15/2044
Location: Rockport, Maine, Southern Lands
Size: square with edges of approximately 30cm
Date of manufacture: 2028
Notes: This fabric was found wedged into a tight knot between two rocks on a beach in the Northern Lands. In the Age of the New Old, the manufacture of nostalgia extended to fabrics like this one. Ancient cloths of India had been shrunken to squares in the time of the great American West, and this age of freedom was now mimicked again for a brief intense period from 2027 to 2029, with square dancing, phrases like ‘Howdy’ and ‘Partner’, and squinting without speaking like John Wayne, becoming commonplace. Hobo-ing, and Riding the Trains , became the new surfing, more than a fad, it was a last desperate gasp for autonomy, for authenticity, for “spontaneity”. hmm

Index Number: 0524-2077
Date of entry: 06/15/2077
Location: Waset New Empire 25°41′N 32°39′E
Size: 185 mm x 185 mm
Date of manufacture: 2046
Notes: Fragments of envelope lining of the numerous letters Bai Ling wrote in an attempt to reconcile with Wang Jin Wen. After Bai Ling moved to the New Empire, Wang Jin Wen moved back into 2046 after returning from the mental hospital. She was a shell of a former self, and was still very depressed over the loss of her Japanese boyfriend. old friend

Index Number: 0409-2041
Date of entry: 09/11/2041
Location: Apartment 209 / 40° 43′ N, 74° 0′ W
Date of manufacture: identified numbers 8410 288 072 / 03/2013
Notes: The card belonged to Mr Bob Last. Manager Of Gang of Four and Human League. Bands that composed and performed Synth-Pop, sounds that have little to do with Rigveda, Samaveda and Yajurveda. The music has been deleted from the Server in 2028, and Mr Last lost a part of his brain, the pons. He could neither control his bladder function nor his sleep. The golden card gave him access to a zero gravity hub where the physical disabilities were compensated. Victoria Nelson Index Number: 0523-2079
Date of entry: 06/06/2079
Location: not identified Size: 85 mm x 39 mm x 10 mm
Date of manufacture: approx. 1998
Notes: The keys do not unlock locks. Sam

Index Number: 0501-2041
Date of entry: 05/07/2041
Location: Pacific Nuclear Wastelands, 35°41′22.22′′N, 139°41′30.12′′E
Date of manufacture: Serial Production approx. 1979-2001
Notes: Medi-technical instrument used by male humans in the second in the setortured by the neurotic conviction that there are only a finite number of erections possible in the world at any one time. Engel Ludwig

Archivists: Victoria Nelson, Anh-Lihn Ngo, Kerim Seiler, Eva Wilson, Bob Last, Ludwig Engel, Hugh Stockton, Jane Clark Chermayeff, Johanna Meyer-Grohbrügge, Marta Fernandez, Bettina Kraus, Carson Chan, Liat Lavi, Avigail Reiner, Leah Abir, Moritz Kung, Bec Brittan, Felix Burrichter, Jack Hogan, Jessica Chermayeff , Jesse Levine, Peter Christensen, Paul Feigelfeld, Anna Hanson, Martin Klosterfelde, Matthias Boetteger, Arno Brandlhuber. Organized by Sam Chermayeff