Tell Me About Yesterday Tomorrow: About the Future of the Past

Historical events and our knowledge of them inevitably mold our understanding of today’s world. This interdisciplinary volume focuses on institutional memory—on the connection between past and future. Tell Me About Yesterday Tomorrow is a bold and unusual publication whose approaches and themes extend from biographical experiences via intergenerational exchange, to the discussion of current social phenomena. To what extent does knowledge of the past, or lack thereof, influence our view of the present and our conception of the future? Authors from the realms of history, art, philosophy, journalism, poetry, cartoons, and film investigate complex everyday reality in history and the present, directing their attention towards the shifts in political hegemonies which lead to ostracism, denigration, and destruction.

The editors of this volume have explicitly chosen to emphasize an international perspective which shows that social polarization and radicalization are not phenomena limited by national boundaries, but are universal social manifestations in a globally interlinked world. Tell Me About Yesterday Tomorrow includes authors such as Roger Cohen, Liam Gillick, Ydessa Hendeles, Sebastian Jung, Leon Kahane, Annette Kelm, Cathrin Lorch, Fred Moten, Khalil Muhammad, Andrea Petö, Dirk Rupnow, Philippe Sands, Geraldine Schwarz, and Niko Wahl. This volume is presented in cooperation with the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism, a place of education and remembrance documenting and addressing the crimes of the Nazi dictatorship and their origins, manifestations, and consequences up to the present day.

Nicolaus Schafhausen is a German curator, director, author, and editor of numerous publications on contemporary art. He is the Strategic Director of Fogo Island Arts and a visiting lecturer at HISK, Higher Institute of Fine Arts, Gent. 

Mirjam Zadoff is director of the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism.

The Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism is a place of education and remembrance documenting and addressing the crimes of the Nazi dictatorship and their origins, manifestations, and consequences up to the present day.