Artifacts of Past Futures

Simply stated, The Elsewhen Library is an archive dedicated to the study of futures past through the examination of the cultural debris those futures have left us in the present. Anachronism runs rampant here. The concepts of past, present, and future being ever fluid means that The Library has an ever shifting point of view. 

On this blog we plan to examine ephemeral objects from the global mass media from roughly the late 50s through the early 80s, the Golden Age of Analog. These "objects" include television programming, cinema, mass market literature, and of course, music. Most of the objects examined here will have been originally created for a general audience. We plan to stay away from self-conscious "high art" while at the same time searching out examples of esotericism that found their way into mass culture. 

Time and memory will be major themes here. Our sense of time is spherical, not linear. Time will become "unstuck" and flow backwards and forwards, up and down, all possible outcomes exist at once. We will present things almost remembered, never remembered, or dredge up lost memories from seemingly unrelated associations.

None of this is meant to sound like faux cultural theory mumbo-jumbo. The Elsewhen Library cannot be easily pinned down in a sound bite. We hope that as this blog develops a better sense of our mission will emerge and that it encourages our audience, however small, to pursue similar investigations of its own.