Fiona Tan: History's Future

Fiona Tan is best known for her skillfully crafted video installations in which explorations of memory, time, history and the role of the visual are pivotal. In 2015, she realized her first feature film, »History’s Future«, which presents the odyssey of a man known only as »MP« (Missing Person) through a Europe in turmoil.

Part fiction, part documentary, part speculative essay on the contemporary world, »History's Future« is about one man’s odyssey through a Europe in turmoil – and through his own mind. After a violent mugging causes him to lose his memory, a man known only as »MP« (Missing Person) leaves his home and sets out on a journey – a search not only for his own identity but also for enlightenment about a world in crisis. On his travels from country to country, through a series of strange, illuminating, sometimes comic encounters, MP gains insight into the complexity of life in the 21^st-century West – into what commentators have called an age of »rolling catastrophe«. As such the film deals not with the crisis itself, but with the array of feelings it has triggered. By the time his journey ends, MP has learned to survive, newly armed with an understanding of how we live today.