The Future of Inheritances: Legacy, Postmemory and Heritage. Lecture by Jorge Blasco Gallardo

“The future is written; only the past remains unpredictable” is a lecture series revolving around the “Legacies in Potential” programme, organised by Bòlit, Centre d’Art Contemporani de Girona as part of the Girona Bimillenary.

The Future of Inheritances proposes understanding legacy not as an object, property or continuous line between past and present, but as a dynamic equation that emerges when knowledge enters into a process of transmission. Bodies, memories, affects, techniques, objects, territories, institutions, generations and power relations all play a role in it. Ultimately, both human and non-human agents are involved.

Postmemory, approached from this perspective, allows us to understand that this transmission can also take place without direct experience, through stories, images, silences, gestures and affects that can continue to act upon subsequent generations. The lecture distinguishes transmission from preservation, and shows that heritage can foster legacy, but can also fix it, appropriate it, or replace living relationships with their representation.

In this context, contemporary art can act not only by representing an inheritance, but by creating situations, workshops and infrastructures where knowledge can circulate again and be transformed. Continuity does not guarantee justice: hierarchies, forms of violence, silences and colonial forms of authority can also be transmitted. Therefore, the fundamental question is not only what remains, but which forms of knowledge continue to circulate, who is able to transmit them, and who has the sovereignty to decide the conditions of that transmission.

Jorge Blasco Gallardo is a researcher, curator and independent director of cultural projects. His work focuses on the study of memory, representation and forms of knowledge production linked to museums, archives, collections and documentary heritage.

In collaboration with the Arxiu Municipal de Girona.