Nelson Guzmán, Cilla Black, Liverpool walk of fame, 2008
Future Visions of History
30 October 2008
Over the course of a single day during the 2008 Liverpool Biennial, a project coordinated by Liverpool-based artists Penny Whitehead and Daniel Simpkins will spread like a virus through the streets of the city. A free newspaper featuring photographic & written contributions from a range of artists will be distributed on a series of mapped routes.
In 1984 Liverpool was host to the UK’s first International Garden Festival, a pioneering and aspirational investment into leisure, internationalism, culture and tourism for the purpose of social and economic regeneration. Despite attracting more than 3 million visitors, the festival has had little sustained impact on the deprivation of its locality. The festival site, which was intended to endure as a functioning public space, was sold to private developers and over the past twenty years has declined into dereliction, generating on-going debate about its future.
In 2008, as hopes for the future of Liverpool, like many cities internationally, rest once again on culturally-driven regeneration, the overgrown and forgotten Festival Gardens - privatised, derelict and fiercely guarded by 24 -hour security - provide an alternative perspective from which to explore elements of the current discourse surrounding culture, capitalism and regeneration.
Over the course of the day, Future Visions of History will appear on the streets of Liverpool. Local, national and international practitioners representing a range of disciplines including visual art, activism, architecture, cultural theory and social geography will contribute varied and engaging responses to issues surrounding Liverpool, its recent history and its future, providing an antidote to the city’s hegemonic literature, art and culture.
