Road to Futures Past
2024, Video, 13 min
This video work explores how predictive power operates through different temporalities – how imagined futures and constructed pasts are used to justify actions in the present. Both obscure the present as a site where the distribution of power occurs.
The first chapter focuses on a decade of Elon Musk’s repeated predictions that self-driving cars will arrive “next year,” showing how future promises are used to legitimize present actions and sustain corporate momentum. The second chapter examines predictive policing, where historical crime data is used to predict criminal activity. Here, the past serves to justify police practices in the present, targeting poor and racialized communities. In the final chapter, these narratives converge: the increasing use of Tesla vehicles in police fleets signals a growing alliance between tech elites and state power—where prediction becomes a tool for repressive actions.
The first chapter focuses on a decade of Elon Musk’s repeated predictions that self-driving cars will arrive “next year,” showing how future promises are used to legitimize present actions and sustain corporate momentum. The second chapter examines predictive policing, where historical crime data is used to predict criminal activity. Here, the past serves to justify police practices in the present, targeting poor and racialized communities. In the final chapter, these narratives converge: the increasing use of Tesla vehicles in police fleets signals a growing alliance between tech elites and state power—where prediction becomes a tool for repressive actions.
Exhibition at FOG MANIFESTO, STWST84x11, September 2025
Screening at „Künstliche Intelligenz und die Zukunft der Demokratie“, Theater Osnabrück, Juni 2025