Thinking Historically About Futurism with The Wende Museum

Zachary Cote: another episode of Thinking Historically About. And perhaps a better title for this particular episode is Thinking like a Futurist or Thinking Futuristically About. ⁓ But we're going to look at futurism and talk about the concept and then also localize it in a Los Angeles context. And so I'm really excited to be talking with Youse Seagal, who is the chief curator and Director of Programming at the Venda Museum in Culver City. Juss, thank you so much for being here. My pleasure. Look forward to it. So I'd love to first contextualize your role in this space. So if you could tell us a little bit about your scholarship, your background, and maybe what brought you to the Venda Museum. And then we can talk a little bit more about the Venda itself. Yeah, sure. So I am originally from the Netherlands. I studied art history at the University of Amsterdam and wrote my PhD on art debates during the first world war in Germany. But then I moved actually from art history to history, became an assistant professor of history at Utrecht University, also in the Netherlands. And Utrecht University has or had an exchange program with UCLA. And when I was guest teaching, At UCLA, I met a student who brought me to the Wyndham Museum and said, you have to see this unique collection. So I visited, I met with Justin Jempel, who is the founder and director of the museum. We became friends, did some projects together. And then in 2014, he invited me to become the chief curator of the museum. That's how it all started for me. That's kind of a happenstance, you know. Totally, yeah, yeah, very impetuous situation. That's cool, yeah. And so you've been with the Benda for over a decade now. Tell us about the mission of the museum, kind of where it started, even when you were kind of first brought on. It looked nothing like it does today. ⁓ you know, what does that path look like? And what are some of the goals in the mission of the museum? So the museum was founded in 2002 and Justin the founder was actually a student back then in Oxford working on his PhD. And he noticed that so many people who had lived through socialism were getting rid of their materials. They abandoned them. And he argued that later historians would still have access to the official political documents and official history. but would lose the opportunity to connect to everyday lives. And that is why he was a small inheritance from his grandfather, started to collect materials, started as a small collection, but then when some ⁓ publications appeared in German magazines, people heard about the museum and started to donate stuff to the museum. partly to get rid of it, but also interestingly, parts because they had a more emotional connection to their stuff and wanted to make sure that it was taken care of in a careful way. A political element with that was that the discussions about the East German past in reunified Germany were very politicized and many former East Germans didn't want their materials to land in a German institution. where they feared people would make fun of them. So they actually experienced the geographical distance in Los Angeles as an advantage and a way of looking at it from a more distance and objective perspective. And then in the course of the years, the museum really grew from a museum focused on East German material culture. to a museum focused on culture, art and everyday life in socialist countries worldwide during the Cold War period. First of all, the mission of the museum is to ⁓ safeguard materials that are in danger of being lost, that you still have access to these materials, but also to use the collection in experimental programs and exhibitions to think about meaningful connections between the past and the present. I love the the experience this experimental nature of some of the exhibits that I've come across and how you interpret the artifacts that you engage with. think what's fascinating is, is it kind of seems like the vendor started with this idea of like one man's trash is another man's treasure. Like people are getting rid of these things. Like, wait, like these are important for, ⁓ you know, telling the every man's story during the Cold War. ⁓ And to the point of kind of the inception of the museum in this acknowledgement that the political history is going to remain whether or not we care, but the material culture and the, you know, kind of everyday person's history could disappear if we're getting rid of this. It's very clear that the museum focuses on art and culture. And can you help us understand like why art and culture, material culture? is a helpful lens to understand the past. Like why are these things worth preserving and analyzing? Yeah, I think it's very worthwhile for historians next to political history and economic history and social history, although cultural history and social history overlapped quite a lot. But I think cultural history helps you understand how events were interpreted. and they give you a sense of the values behind these experiences. And I would say, especially in political situations of oppression and dictatorship, as was the case in many of the communist countries, culture was the only way for people to ⁓ in a more liberal way give meaning to their lives. So they were not allowed to express themselves freely in a political sense, but culture is another language and ⁓ people are always very creative in finding ways to express themselves and to share their experiences ⁓ in unofficial and sometimes even subversive ways. And in order to really get a sense of that layer of society, Art and culture are fantastic sources. Yeah. Yeah. think of, ⁓ you know, in some of the examples and people being creative. and how they present their experiences, you know, it's this use of imagination. Like I'm trying to imagine something that maybe the person in power won't understand on its surface, but we might. And so we, we portray in that way. And so the, the students, so, you know, for those listening, every unit of study that Thinking Nation creates for our curriculums, we align to like a particular historic site or museum. And so, We're having students engage with a unit on futurism ⁓ in the lens of ethnic studies. And so we're working alongside the Venda for that. It's just kind of a place-based connection. And one of the things I've appreciated about the Venda is its imagination. As an institute, you are very imaginative in the way you use space and the way you offer your space. ⁓ to others in the way you think about material culture and art, the way that you align, ⁓ you know, the histories of different oppressive regimes and what that looks like and making those connections. But one of the kind of key components of futures thinking is imagination, right? That there's multiple futures ⁓ that can be shaped and we're not kind of tied down to one particular future. Absolutely, which is by the way, another great reason why it's so interesting to look at culture, because culture and cultural expressions don't take reality for granted. They imagine how you can have an alternative way of life or an alternative organization of your society. yeah. Yes, which Okay, so like, let's think about this like alternative approach. So you have an exhibit coming up later this year called competing cosmologies, which is really a futurist exhibit. Can you tell us about ⁓ the exhibit? Yes, but also why this exhibit? What vision is there behind doing this at your institution? Right, so for all our exhibitions, the collection is the... anchor point. It's not the end point, but it is the starting point. And we argued that the space race was actually a very important aspect of Cold War history. But then it's also very interesting in the sense that the space race obviously started as a competition between the United States and the Soviet Union, but then somehow ended in collaboration with the International Space Station. 1975, the fact that American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts met with each other, became friends, two of them actually wrote a double autobiography together. So I think it's a very hopeful story that something that starts as international conflict can also be solved on a personal and cultural level. But there are more aspects to it. So I also think that the experience of leaving the earth and looking back and very relevant today with the launch of Artemis II, by the way. Yeah, which was yesterday. Which was yesterday, exactly. Yeah, in some other time or place. Right, right, right. But the experience of looking back at earth and seeing it as one whole, that's almost an invitation to conceive of history as a global phenomenon. And that is something else we want to highlight at the museum that the Cold War was not a struggle between East and West, but was something with global connections and implications. So we are also always looking at other parts of the world that are included in this story. And yeah, that's definitely also the case for an exhibition about space. So we have different sections in this exhibition. One is actually artists working together with ⁓ astronomers and physicists to help them develop their theories. But there is a section on the space race and how artists dealt with the space race. And then there's a specific section on futurisms, which is artists mostly from non-Western origins using the spaces and metaphor and speculating about an alternative present or an alternative future, which is more emancipatory in character. where non-white people have an equal role in science, society, art, as other people. Can you maybe speak, know, in seeing some of the art that will be on display later this year? Can you maybe make more clear or explicit the link between futurism and emancipation? know, this emancipatory thinking. Yeah, what does that mean or what does that look like? So the term futurism might be a bit tricky because most people in the art world, first of all, associated with Italian futurism, and then with Confetturism. from the 1910s which were movements that were really celebrating new technology and rejecting the past. violence, Italian futurists were actually propagating war as well. Also the destruction of art academies, the destruction of museums. But that is not so much the way how futurism ⁓ currently works in the works of Afrofuturists and other Latinx futurists, et cetera. What they have in common with the original futurist is that they're looking forward, that they're looking ahead and not accepting reality as it is. But in this case, not so much to destroy everything, but rather to develop alternatives. alternative visions, more or less in the tradition of utopian thinking. Utopian thinking started in the 16th century, if you will, with Thomas More, in his book, Utopia, which was the first real attempt to confront existing society with a radically different model. And that is still something that you see in futurist arts of our day, the idea to either look into the future in science fiction or even look back into a mythical past or in fantasy to explore these alternative worlds that abstract from the here and now. ⁓ So I want to come back to the title, competing cosmologies, but could you like, why do you think art and futurism, and I mean, futurism in the modern sense, not in the 1910 Italian futurism. ⁓ Students will learn about this Italian futurism kind of moment before they explore the kind of the modern understanding. ⁓ But why do think it's important for art and futurism or for art to be an expressive ⁓ expression of futurism? ⁓ What do they have in common? This like this almost utopian type of thinking and then also this very creative, you know, expression. Yeah, think so. ⁓ Afrofuturism is an art form. This art exists in visual art, also in film, in literature. Right. And I think what it has in common with art in general is, and we talked about that a little bit already, is the capacity to abstract from ⁓ existing political and social conditions. and really come up with creative solutions and creative ideas about what is possible. think people easily, including myself, forget that when you are born into a certain society, there are lots of things you take for granted. You think they are as they are because they couldn't be different. And I think arts and futurism helps you to understand that the world we are living in is based on choices and that these choices could have been otherwise and that future choices can also be different from the choices we made in the past. Yeah, you know, and as historians, we're studying the past, we talk about contingency, right? The past is not inevitable, but it's contingent on human choice. ⁓ And that's the same for, I mean, it's kind of what futurists are saying about the future too. Like this is not. inevitable or the status quo doesn't need to remain. you know, there's, yeah, I agree. And in that sense, I think it's important to differentiate between futurists and futurologists, who are people who try to extrapolate the present into the future and make sometimes quite deterministic prognosis. And that is the opposite of futurism. Futurism is about breaking open the future and showing new perspectives. Yeah. It's not a magic gateball. The futurologist maybe would hope ⁓ it worked that easily. Exactly. Can you tell us about the title, competing cosmologies? Because part of me is kind of like, in acknowledging multiple futures, it's like expansive cosmologies or multiple cosmologies. But competing implies kind of the beginnings of the Cold War. But yeah, tell us about that choice. Yeah, no, that's what it references. It references the start of the space race and the start of a scientific model, both in the United States and the Soviet bloc countries based on competition and secrecy and not willing to exchange information. And then the part that is not covered in the title, is the next phase of collaboration, of globalization, and overcoming this competitive context. The museum itself does not have permanent exhibits around futurism. This is something that's... you know, coming out. Is in the fall of 2026? that when? That's right. In November, the exhibition will be opened. But I think that futurism as a concept, I actually see more at your museum than most museums. And it's not just about the collections, but it's also about like the way that you orient yourself as a community space. It's very imaginative. So I'm just curious, like, Do you find that the concept of futurism kind of influences your work at all or the museum's mission? How do those things relate? Well, I haven't thought of it in those terms, but I am very happy that you mention this imaginative component of the museum, because that is definitely something we try to achieve to not just be a place where we ⁓ take care of historical artifacts and share them. but also to bring them alive, so to speak, to put them in contexts that provoke visitors to think about it and to also make connections for themselves between past and present. Why are things as they were and what do they imply for our current situation? And then, as you mentioned, we in the past few years opened up the museum also to other nonprofits for alternative programs with music, with film, with mindfulness, because I think all those things work together and can inform each other or a more complete approach of life, so to speak. I mean, I even think about like the layout of your exhibit, your permanent exhibition halls that kind of come out on the perimeter. in a futurist mindset. And maybe this is because I've been way in the weeds in futurism lately and just kind of processing this unit for the students. But every, you know, to paint a picture in the Venda's exhibits, you you have the artifacts in kind of the traditional glass cases. But then above and below, there's all these boxes of more artifacts, right? That the collections are They're visible even when they're not visible, right? They're in the boxes, which is already making me always wonder, like, what else is here? What's not being displayed at this moment? And it kind of forces you to imagine these multiple interpretations of the same event, which is, you know, that's one of our historical thinking skills is evaluating perspective and kind of looking for these multiple perspectives. But it's also very much this futures thinking skill. I mean, even in the layout, like I'm... I don't know, the Venda is becoming more more futurist the more I think about it. That's very funny. And if I can give you one example of an exhibition we did, was called questionable history. And this is to your point. So we put up artwork, not with one, but with two exhibition labels on either side. And you were both historically accurate, but completely contradicted each other in their interpretation to show that which is commonly accepted in history and art history and the domestic disciplines in general that there's always discussion about interpretations. Why don't you see that normally speaking in museum? I think it should be there as well. Open it up and not close it down. Yeah. hopefully that's what it does is it allows the people who come to the museum to continue the conversation after they leave the museum, right? And thinking through. these perspectives. Yeah, that is definitely our hope that that happens. Yeah. You said I know this is not your domain in the museum, but I'm wondering if you can speak to kind of how the museum interacts with education more broadly or what that looks like, ⁓ you know, in working with teachers or schools or or maybe even just like what do you hope people experience when they're when they're there? Yeah, so we have a lot of school, college, university groups coming to the museum. And when we are presenting tours, we actually try to continue the philosophy of the museum, which is based in asking questions. ⁓ we don't try to be a continuation of the reference books used at school or... in the classroom, but yeah, we try to open it up and go into a conversation with the students. What do they know? And how does what they see in the museum relate to what they know? Does it confirm it? Does it contradict it? Does it add another layer? So I think, again, opening up perspectives is very important for us also in an educational context. Yeah. Yeah. tends to be a theme, right? To open our minds, to maybe challenge our preconceived notions, to get us to think more. Yes, exactly. Hopefully, as part of this unit on futurism, students will also have to think about their own communities in the future. Like, what can I be doing now to be one of the... There is a futurist that calls it being a good ancestor. How can I be a good ancestor for my descendants? Maybe to that point, it's also interesting to mention that we are doing a mini exhibition in April with students from an art collective at the Cofor City High School. And we asked them to make works that reflect on the concepts of space and place. So where do they feel at home? What are their origins? What are their connections? And what does it mean to them to be in a place or in a space? And we are getting very interesting works from them. yeah. I'm sure, yeah. I'll have to make it over there and see how they look. I love that. I mean, yeah, space in place. We think about this a lot. in history and we add time as a component as well. ⁓ Well, Juss, thank you so much for talking to us, talking to us about the Venda, talking to us about futurism. I really appreciate your expertise and always enjoy an excuse to talk and collaborate with you. So thanks for being here. It was a great pleasure. Thank you.