Past Present

Sumus Deridets’ passion for realizing the future by collecting what is impossible today is reflected in the guiding ethos of these collections. An encyclopaedic collection of visual artefacts documenting the proliferation of the lemniscate (commonly referred to as the infinity symbol) across times, places and cultures. Dating back to antiquity, the varied content of the collection includes assorted variations of the ouroboros (the ancient image of a snake eating its own tail), crosses of Saint Boniface and assorted graphic applications found in tarot cards, the Metis flag (1816) and modern typography. What is believed to be the earliest printed version of John Wallis’ De sectionibus conicis (1655) is a particular feature of the collection. Historical artefacts and ephemera dating back to the Middle Ages dedicated to Perpetual Motion Machines, including archival materials and treatise attributed to Villard de Honnecourt, Athanasius Kircher, Robert Boyle, Mariano di Jacopo detto il Taccola and Johann Bessler (Orffyreus); to the works (realized and unrealized) of industrial pioneers from the 19th century, such as Charles Redheffer and John Worrell Keely. A comprehensive archive of extant patents for perpetual motion machines produced over the twentieth century that have been surreptitiously acquired; and An idiosyncratic collection of modern and contemporary art and design, including kinetic works by Marcel Duchamp and Alexander Calder; sculptural objects by Robert Morris, Hans Haacke, Piero Manzoni, Donald Judd, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Helio Oiticica, Jeff Koons and Charles Ray; and “Feynman Diagrams” inspired by Nobel Prize-winning American physicist Richard Feynman. The collected Collections of Sumus Deridet forms the basis of the Museum of Future Objects.

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