Cápsula de Tiempo Córdoba by Agencia de Viaje, Expo'92

Time Capsules, as they are traditionally conceived, are artifacts that reify the social, political and historical imperatives of a given community. Commonly associated with the celebration of Worlds Fairs, they are hermetically sealed containers that preserve a collection of material culture as messages to the future.
 
Operating inside this language, Agencia de Viaje has produced the Cápsula de Tiempo Córdoba; a linear asphalt matrix that extends without limits along the the Guadalquivir river. Originally conceived for Córdoba, this displaced time machine initiates a public communications system where moment and place are charged with the infinite possibilities contained in everyday existence.
 
Redirecting the combustible energies of fossil fuel into speech, the time capsule's impregnable density is shaped by its socio-ecological context. An open and permeable receptor, the tar reacts like an exposed nerve. It is sensitive to external input and metamorphoses with every impulse that penetrates it. In this liquid substance-space, container and contained are one.
 

Inaugurated on October 12th, 1992, with the closing of the Expo’92 in Sevilla, this wishing well to the present is issued free of deposits and awaits new archaeological writing.

Agencia de Viaje is Victoria Gil, Kirby Gookin,  Federico Guzmán and Robin Kahn.

To see a PHOTO ALBUM of the time capsule's creation and inauguration

Filling the Time Capsule with liquid tar

The Time Capsule on Opening Day

A Visitor inserting a message to the future

The Time Capsule's Signage (since stolen), 1992

Time Capsule ReACTION 1991

An early idea for a time capsule: to bury a car filled with various things, driven by human skeletons. We poured liquid asphalt into the back of this abandoned car on Mercer Street. The car's driving (or has crashed) with the road on its back. 1991