Archaeology is fundamentally a historical science, one that encompasses the general objectives of reconstructing, interpreting, and understanding past human societies. It is a uniquely hybrid intellectual endeavour that requires knowledge of an eclectic, wide-ranging set of analytic methods and social theories to write the history of past societies.
Although using archaeological excavations as a presentation form Fokkens aims the reverse. With Every future (is a crime scene) he applies a strategy of 'archeology of the future' investigating a physical and mental space for reflection, which enables different ways to relate to the future time.
The works shown in Every future (is a crime scene) armed by definition with a utopian ‘blueprint’ look into the possibilities of archaeological and oracular sites as devices to ‘think ahead’, to speculate on things to come. This negotiation of a utopian vision of the future, of man and the world is manifested in the form of site specific installations constructed out of wood, natural materials but also neon lights and incorporate drawings (drafts) and in some occasions photography.
According to Fokkens, art promises to offer the means to speculate on things to come, to place oneself in another time, another space and at another pace.
This idea of utopianism or the utopian method that is inherent to archaeology can best be described in Tyson Lewis's writings in that ‘the future comes to us in ruins through which the utopian archaeologist fits together its mysterious contours’*
And so like a utopian archaeologist Fokkens pieces together the ‘flashes of the future’ that can be glimpsed amidst flickering moments of anticipatory consciousness.
