Back to the Future consists of five kinetic sculptures that rewind fragments of Iraqi folk songs, intangible cultural heritage, at varying speeds. Each sculpture incorporates a 3D-printed cassette tape activated by a graphite pencil, whose rotation sets the cassette wheels in motion. As the songs turn and fragment, the mechanism produces a deliberately distorted echo of memory, where the physical object of the cassette meets the immaterial resonance of sound and heritage.
Together, the five sculptures form a rhythmic constellation of sound, motion, and recall. Their uneven tempos generate shifting layers of remembrance, suggesting how memory is never fixed but continuously rewound, altered, and reinterpreted.
Detail views
Video documentation (excerpt)
Installation views
Details:
- Five kinetic sculptures
- 3D-printed cassette tapes
- Rotation mechanisms
- Media players
- Pencils
- Speakers
- Customised pedestals
- Dim.: 6 × 12.5 × 1.3 cm
- With thanks to Eetu Huhtala
- C. by: Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, Beirut