By looking back and reviewing our recent modern past, we may be able to foresee and shape a different future. That has been one of the premises of the project MEMORIES OF MODERNITY. By simultaneously looking back and looking into the future one may detect surprising similarities between two apparently completely different societies like South Africa and Sweden – or, more specifically, the cities of Durban and Malmö. ‘Memory’ and ‘Modernity’ are key concepts in the analysis of our contemporary predicament, in Sweden as in South Africa. Memory invokes the books and albums made for the children of parents dying of AIDS. It invokes literature as reflection and testimony. It invokes the emotion-laden issue of cultural heritage. What do we bring with us to the future? Whose heritage are we preserving, and which values are to prevail? Memory also invokes the modern past, in Sweden closely linked to rapid industrialization and the social democratic model, in South Africa to the dark era of apartheid and its equally rational but racist welfare society. The differences are obvious. But what are the similarities in Sweden's and South Africa's experiences of modernity? These are questions that explicitly or implicitly have informed this experimental project, involving four Swedish and four South African artists and a group of post-graduate students from Malmö University.