Maarten Vanden Eynde

Digging up the Future is a monograph of the work of the multi-disciplinary Belgian artist Maarten Vanden Eynde. It brings together works from the past 20 years (2000-2020) of his research-based practice which spans diverse social, economic, environmental and anthropological perspectives. The book is built up as an alternative encyclopaedia of the history of human kind, investigating our influence on planet Earth and the residue of our material culture. It covers some of the most important subjects of our time from extractionism, ecology, and colonialism to the after-effects of colonialism. It proposes an industrial and post-industrial archaeology of the future, mapping out a speculative 'future-fiction' of our evolutionary traces on earth.