Maarten Vanden Eynde

“Digging up the Future” is a monograph on the sometimes disconcerting, always thought-provoking practice of multi-disciplinary Belgian artist Maarten Vanden Eynde. It brings together artworks from the last 20 years of his research-based practice (2000-2020), which explores divers social, economic, environmental and anthropological trajectories. The books is conceived as an alternative encyclopedia of the history of humankind as it investigates our influence on planet Earth and the often toxic residues of our material culture. It covers some of the most important subjects of our time, from extractivism, production, waste and ecology to the after-effects of colonialism. And it proposes an industrial and post-industrial archaeology of the future, mapping out a speculative future history of the evolutionary and material traces we leave behind on Earth.