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.
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)
Kate Sansom Nothing is Free in Waterworld 2009
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