Past, present, future: steampunk as bricolage

: What would a mobile phone look like today if it had been produced in 1880? And what would the world look like if Victorian technology had been used to develop products similar to those we find today? Such alternative historical ideas are not only imagined in Steampunk, but are also implemented. Past, present, and future coincide and build a whole world of their own: between retro and science fiction. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/phw-2018-13012


Nostalgic Aestheticization
Steampunk culture is based on the self-performance and nostalgic aestheticization of a bygone era, which did not exist in this form. Here, as well as in living history or reenactment, clothing -as part of material culture -becomes an instrument for entering a "bodily and imaginary dialogue" [2] with the historical period that the actors seek to represent.
Retro-futuristic objects are combined with Victorian-looking clothes, for instance, top hats, tails and vests as well as crinolines and corsets. The defining features of steampunk fashion include so-called "goggles," glasses made out of brass or bronze and usually sitting inoperably on the forehead or hat. While for the "Sixties scene" the original garments have a special appeal, and whereas for reenactors the faithful reproductions are crucial, members of the steampunk movement create something unprecedented, something that derives from the dialectical fusion of past, present, and an imagined future.

Creative Recycling
Steampunk is characterized by the creative fabrication of new objects from old things or already known things. What, the actors ask themselves, might a co!ee machine have looked like in the 19th century? Such alternating imaginations of history become real in steampunk and materialize in concrete, still-functioning objects. For this purpose, flea market objects, semi-finished products, screws, old heating tubes, various materials (wood, brass, leather, velvet), and many other things are assembled creatively to fashion an end product resembling a technical product of the 19th century. [3] A standard co!ee machine is thus transformed into an exceptional and exclusive piece. Steampunk, then, is a kind of creative recycling culture which integrates consumables and "marginal things" [4] of everyday life. Modern bulk goods become "animated" unique pieces in retro-optics.
Authenticity Through DIY However, steampunk also means "Do it yourself" (DIY), thus making it part of the so-called "Do it yourself culture." The movement also makes intensive use of technology, especially digital media. Often, technical problems are solved with simple and available resources; the focus lies on discovering creative alternatives and individual solutions. DIY and the "homemade" label guarantee authenticity. This, in turn, as in many other fields of historical culture (Geschichtskultur), functions as a means of distinction. For what is bought is not steampunk, "because it is all about DIY and handicraft," says Alexander Jahnke, the founder of the "German Steampunk Society." [5] Steampunk -a Field of Public History?
Steampunk, which deals with the future of the past, extends not only the notion of doing history, but is also based on the creative fabrication of material culture. In this sense, steampunk is a recycling culture in two respects: First, it can be found in the practical execution of DIY, since steampunks rely both on consumables and on everyday objects. Second, this reuse culture is characterized by anachronistic styles and the attempt to produce simultaneity out of non-simultaneity. This double bricolage leads to a new and hybrid retro-futuristic material culture that experiences both a change and even an increase in meaning. Steampunk therefore is far more than retro fashion: It seeks to playfully link past, present, and future.
As a phenomenon of popular culture, steampunk is part of the growing pluralization of historical images (Geschichtsbilder). These images increasingly exist "in synthetic and hybrid connections, also mixtures, overlappings and bricolages," which appear to us as "multifaceted, ambiguous and thus arbitrary or puzzling." [6] Precisely these manifold and polysemic imaginations are central to public history, a research field that I consider part of the cultural sciences. Against this background, public history not only asks "what?" but also "how?" The latter is key. Not least because steampunk is nothing fixed, but instead results from attribution processes and dynamic practices.