This summer the , London, celebrates the history and ingenuity of Science Fiction across the disciplines of art, design, film and literature.听Bringing together an outstanding number of seminal, recent and newly commissioned pieces, Into the Unknown: A Journey through Science Fiction examines our curiosity in听otherworldly phenomena and looks at how artists have engaged with the genre. The historian and writer Patrick Gyger has curated a festival-style exhibition, comprised of various chapters and featuring more than 800 works. Many of this works have never been displayed in the UK prior to the show.
Beginning with Chapter 1, titled Extraordinary Journeys, Gyger invites viewers to interact with听a cabinet of curiosities containing original manuscripts and drawings from Jules Verne, as well as James Gurney鈥檚 Dinotopia series. Moving past a plethora of dinosaur models by Ray Harryhausen and听influential literature including听Francis Bacon鈥檚 New Atlantis and Daniel Defoe鈥檚 Robinson Crusoe,听the audience is flung into Space Odysseys. Here, art and literature tell the story of space travel. Featured works include Soda_Jerk鈥檚 video installation Astro Black, vintage postcards and adverts promoting Soviet visions of space, as well as novels by Arthur C Clarke, CS Lewis and Naomi Mitchison.
Elsewhere, Chapter 3, Brave New Worlds, highlights the dystopian worlds we have created for our futures in听Margaret Atwood鈥檚 The Handmaid鈥檚 Tale, Ray Bradbury鈥檚 Fahrenheit 451, George Orwell鈥檚 Nineteen Eighty-Four, and the听architectural plans and designs from Ben Wheatley鈥檚 adaption of听High Rise. Concluding with Final Frontiers, the exhibition highlights the听multi-award-winning VFX company Double Negative鈥檚 installation around the android Ava, star of Ex Machina听and also screens听Sunspring, which was written entirely by an artificial intelligence bot for SciFi London鈥檚 48-hour film challenge.
Isaac Julien joins a line-up of esteemed visual artists. His听Encore II (Radioactive)听(2004) will be exhibited in the Barbican foyers, while听a new light, movement and sound commission by Conrad Shawcross听takes over The Pit theatre space.听Other commissions include US Artist Trevor Paglen’s听Orbital Reflector (Diamond Variation),听a prototype for an actual spacecraft that could be launched into low earth orbit; and Black Mirror, a six foot installation from the award-winning British TV series of the same name.听Based on an episode from the first series,15 Million Merits,听the commission听is displayed across multiple screens across the Barbican’s main entrance hall.
Meanwhile, Palestinian video artist Larissa Sansour鈥檚 film In the Future They Ate from the Finest Porcelain fuses Science Fiction, archaeology and politics to explore the role of myth in history, fact and national identity, and Invisible Cities #Part 1 #Metabolism by Pierre-Jean Giloux, reconstructs some of the architectural projects of the Japanese Metabolism movement. The summer-long exhibition features a wealth of special events, talks, workshops and screenings throughout the Centre until September.
Into the Unknown: A Journey through Science Fiction,听3 June – 1 September, Barbican Centre, London.
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Credits
1. Into the Unknown, Barbican campaign 2017. Courtesy of the Barbican, London.
