Science Fiction 01: The Future Present
Mark Nakamura Back in Five 2009
The visionary power of science fiction has always been rich ground for the artistic imagination. Yet these notions of a possible future tend to be shaped by a cautionary, if overtly pessimistic, perspective where the technologically induced dystopia of a morally corrupted society has gone irreversibly awry.
Things look a little brighter in the group exhibition “Science Fiction 01,” currently on view at Vancouver’s Or Gallery, which gathers works by artists who position the unknown future as less a burden than a prospect for positive outcomes.
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Holly Ward Object Relations, First Version ongoing |
Take, for instance, Kate Sansom’s performance project Nothing Is Free In Waterworld, which neatly taps into the questionable avant-gardism of the Vancouver-hosted Expo 86. Sansom transforms part of the gallery into an office space for her ongoing bid to repurpose a derelict, floating McDonald’s restaurant left over from the world fair’s heyday. Another work, Holly Ward’s Object Relations, First Version, features a disparate assembly of “historical” objects—a Darth Vader candy dispenser, a book on how to build a time machine, a prism, a lunar-looking rock—that together make a curious if intriguing history of contemporary culture as seen from the year 2106.
Other artists in the show include Brady Cranfield, Robert Filliou, Nicole+Ryan and Håvard Pedersen. But it is perhaps the everyday poetry of Mark Nakamura’s Back in Five that best tempers our perpetual anxiety with what the future may hold. A printed note taped to the gallery door reads “I will be back in five minutes” as a simple reminder that for better or worse the future remains full of possibility—all we can do is patiently wait to see what happens next. (555 Hamilton St, Vancouver BC)
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Kate Sansom Nothing is Free in Waterworld 2009 |
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