Who Owns the Past? With Jorge Conde and Sergi Opisso

Presentation of the book Who Owns the Past? led by the visual artist and researcher Jorge Conde and Sergi Opisso, creative director, art director and co-founder of Opisso Studio.

Who Owns the Past? is a visual archival essay on industrial memory, which has been rescued from oblivion by cultural initiatives in 17 Western European countries.

Combining documentary photography, photographic collage and subjective, poetic narrative speculation, the work involves the consolidation of significant postmemory from Jorge Conde’s twelve years of fieldwork in 75 European cities. During this time, he explored 140 cases of industrial buildings recovered through various kinds of cultural initiatives.

This publication conceptually and methodologically stems from a larger contemporary art project entitled Estas ruinas que (no) ves son una promesa (These Ruins You [Don’t] See Are a Promise), which was exhibited at iconic institutions such as Tabacalera Madrid (2020-2021), Fabienne Levy Gallery in Lausanne, Switzerland (2020), IAACC Pablo Serrano in Zaragoza (2023) and Museu Nacional de la Ciència i la Tècnica de Catalunya – MNACTEC (2024).