Conversation with Lasse Lau, one of the curators of the upcoming exhibition Past is Not Post.

Past is Not Post is an exhibition of artists who work on history and memory or on the basis of archival research. As much as the contexts and methods of these works may differ, they are united by an artistic impulse: in a present in which other paths seem blocked, they use the reappraisal of history as a kind of back door. In view of the ambivalent role that artists play in today’s societies – especially the problem of joining existing political and social conflicts – overlapping and unfinishednarratives of the past can offer alternative approaches. Can such an engagement with the past succeed in creating spaces for the reformulation of our collective possibilities and needs, spaces that stand for both resistance and retreat?

Lasse Lau (born 1974 in Sønderborg, Denmark) is a visual artist and filmmaker based in Copenhagen and New York. His projects often function as a mediator and channel of crises, as well as shifts that occur through frictions between absolute, relative or relational spaces. Lau studied at the Funen Art Academy, Denmark and the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program, USA. His work has been exhibited at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; Aarhus Art Museum, Denmark; and the Contemporary Museum, Baltimore, among others.