World Expositions as Time Machines: Two Views of the Visual Construction of Time between Anthropology and Futurama

International expositions as representative cultural phenomena which contributed to shape world history in the modern and contemporary age are currently approached from combined spatial points of view (in a geographical, material, and cultural sense). It is argued in this article that they may be better studied, and understood in the classroom, by also taking into account their temporal and historical dimensions. The symbolic and discursive structure and modules of exhibition-style events such as the "Great Expositions" during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, particularly the living human expositions, have in fact been organized along temporal and historical coordinates as well as spatial ones. The two sections of this article explain the functioning of expos as "time-machines." As the first part of this essay will argue, nineteenth and early-twentieth century expos and fairs visually represented the human ways of living, activities, products and achievements diversities in the historical past and future, hence presenting them in a temporal dimension. Elements of this temporal representation included the effort to reproduce ancient Greek or Roman temples and monuments, Oriental palaces, decorative details and typical settings such as harems and cafés, and, most of all, medieval streets, quarters, castles and whole villages, example not just of the pursuit of the picturesque, but of the intention to make possible the visual experience of temporality and a material, emotional and empathetic understanding of history. Also the living ethno-expositions, through the physical presence of alien humans, put on stage historical temporality, offering to the gaze of Western observers the conflation of present savage societies and primitive or ancient societies, seen as the progenitors of contemporary societies. As the second part of this essay will further suggest, the exposition can be deciphered, in this respect, as a time machine as well as a teaching device with significant parallels with the development of modern museums in the hierarchical organization of displays according to evolutionary paradigms, and their educational function. With 1889's Eiffel Tower, Alva Edison's pavilion of electric light, and the Hall of Machines, the technological sublime and the thematization of the future became central features of expositions: the time machine began to be set on a date yet to come, offering the visitor "an early encounter with tomorrow." Expos, through their richness as material objects and communicative circuits – exploiting specific treatments of space, visual representations and stagings, and the cinematic dimension of theatrical performances and the movement of viewers – increasingly worked as science-fictional devices, embodying a sense of wonder and producing in spectators' mechanisms of cognitive estrangement which prepared the ground for the emergence of science fiction as a codified and recognizable genre.