
Future Fossils: Deep Future and Archaeology
Future Fossils: Deep Future and Archaeology is a peek into a new project, closely connected with the hybrid filmproject “One” A Letter to Eternity. Artifacts and ruins of antiquity – be they Classical antiquities, both monuments and sculptures of past civilization, belong to the notion of an everchanging landscape and deep sense of cultural synergy, linking our timely presence with the existence of ephemeral ‘bodies of forgotten civilization’. With the gods and semi-divine heroes there also travelled a mental cargo, the baggage of stories – muthoi, thus myths – or future fossils, connecting to Deep Future. Language as much as ancient monuments, ruins and artifacts thereof, belong to the notion of an everchanging landscape and deep sense of cultural synergy, forged by migration, whence our timely presence merges with the existence of ephemeral ‘bodies of forgotten civilization’. Alas, a future odyssey is to be uncovered, along the Mediterranean shores and its hinterlands… The project entwines filmmaking, performance and rite, voices of the collective, with sculpture and shaping a landscape of imagination and immersion.

Future Fossils: Deep Future and Archaeology, Project by Ilse Frech (ongoing, 2023/21-2016)
“One”, A Letter to Eternity
Current Project
A magic realistic mosaic tale of a personal quest and voyage of the individual roaming the rough landscape surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, with the Other’ as leitmotif, one endures a many lessons to arrive at the sacred space of the alchemy of the heart; witnessing a choreographed collective procession of people and their rituals taking place, crossing dimensions of time, inspired by Egyptian- and Hellenistic influences from Antiquity to Classicism. Following the Phoenicians’ historic maritime route, an entangling ‘Odyssean’ gaze creates yet another tale of the ‘condition humaine’.
This poetic quest explores compassion across the Mediterranean Sea, love letter to diversity in an eternal arena of mankind in perpetual movement: two-way flow of exile and belonging. “One”, A Letter to Eternity, displays a human chain – and sculpture in time or ‘sculpted in time’, of people, over generations, in embrace – Pietà alike. Evoked and told by locals living in present times, be their personal (his)story narrator of heroism, tragedy or the ultimate expression of love, tolerance, sorrow or compassion. A ‘living’ sculpture, where habitants of the Mediterranean co-create a lasting ‘vivid blueprint’, for eternity.

"A Letter to Eternity - A Prelude" (research footage, '16 filmstill) Ilse Frech.