Trend Union General Trends AW 23/24 | ARCHAEOLOGY

ARCHAEOLOGY: fragments of past & future

autumn / winter 2023—24 

Pivotal trends are excavated from the earliest of times to the latest of futures and will bring a sense of awe, from the human ability to design itself into being to how people design themselves out of the realm of reality. Humankind has managed to invent pigments, materials, metals, tools, textiles, food recipes and culture, and continues to invent colour sources, recycle materials, hybridise metals, tackle tools, weave new fibre, design exceptional foods and write, sculpt, paint, photograph and dance. People are genius and it is good to recall this in terrible troubled times, when aggression and separatism, negligence and racism, as well as blatant patriotism, risk taking over. Somehow, to understand the primitive human is to grasp our basic instinct for survival over the barbarian practices of today, and this helps us remain connected by our capacity for invention and improvisation.
If humans have always been that resourceful, we cannot be that bad after all?

We might find a chiselled piece of rock as endearing as the gathered arm of a robot, and somehow it makes sense to see them in sequence since both are tools to achieve progress, to do production and to provide protection. We are still the same, trying to make sense of life, labouring for better conditions and opting for creative solutions to enhance our existence. Lifestyle has existed since we were hunter gatherers in prehistoric times, and numerous people today aspire to again become a nomadic citizen of the world. From the Bronze Age to the Brutalist Age, the circle is complete when we focus on bold shapes, robust matter and an almost combative presence in material design. We can therefore research the past even better than our current culture, since true keys to greatness lie both in our past and our future – for now, forgetting the dramatic present.