“They looked forward to going back, but when they got there, they found that the future was not what it used to be.”
Eleanor Stonor Saunders

What significance does the word ‘archive’ have in our contemporary and digitally connected world? And how can artistic practice engage modern technologies to instil new meaning in archival material? A new body of work by artist Alex Urso takes these questions as a starting point, revisiting and reinterpreting material found in the Magna Żmien archive.

Urso lends materiality to the digital, endowing a three-dimensionality through installations and interactive collage. Imagery familiar to Maltese audiences – 20th century streetscapes, everyday scenes and portraits – are re-imagined and re-contextualised in a multiplicity of still and moving images.

This exhibition – part of ŻiguŻajg Festival – also speaks to a multi-generational audience, allowing the past to travel towards us, and making scenes from the past accessible to 21st century eyes. Still and moving images fade in and out like pulsing objects, hundreds of paper cubes accumulate in a physical manifestation of digital images, and already lived lives are brought to life through augmented reality.