“Science fiction is marked by contrasts between the quotidian and the fantastic and images that depict such moments abound in the works of numerous contemporary artists in the ‘21st Century: Art in the First Decade exhibition. Mitra Tabrizian’s City, London 2008 could well be a scene from a science fiction film, its group of men in an office atrium mill about in aimless contemplation, an ambiguous narrative suspended in time. As Kobena Mercer points out in the exhibition catalogue, “…in the corporate minimalism of their architectural surroundings, the men’s dark suits draw attention to similarities of gender and age. Variations of race and ethnicity are apparent as white faces are in the minority, but sameness makes an odd return in the look-alike indeterminacy of the majority…” Like the film Gattaca, with its narrative of genetic manipulation and the domination of commercial imperatives, and its highly stylised art direction of office atria and suited men and women, individual identity in both film and photograph is besieged by the technological-real.”

“There are numerous other works that engage with the aesthetics of science fiction in ‘21st Century exhibition. The decolonizing.ps project The Book of Migration 2009 which depicts a contested site in Israel/Palestine, and Bill Henson’s Untitled 2008-09 which quotes Arnold Böcklin Island of the dead 1880, propose connective lines between art, science fiction and the cinema – films such as La jetée and The Road (John Hillcoat, 2009) anticipate and elaborate on these depictions of the unease we feel in the contested spaces of the city, and by contrast, in the Romantic wilderness after the fall of civilisation. Perhaps the two most astonishing examples of the way contemporary art engages with SF can be found in two video works. SUPERFLEX’s Flooded McDonalds 2009 is exactly as the title describes; a McDonalds slowly fills with water, the detritus of wrappers and packaging and a plastic statue of the corporation’s mascot rising up to the ceiling. Aernout Mik’s Pulverous 2003 is a three-screen video of a supermarket being torn apart by a seemingly-bland collection of middle class types. This scene replicates an almost identical sequence in Blindness where the citizens of an unnamed city, stricken by a blindness-inducing disease, negotiate the darkened interior of a supermarket in a frenzy brought on by hunger and desperation. Although science fiction purports to depict moments that have not yet occurred, the relationship between art, cinema and the aesthetics of science fiction demonstrates that these are acute moments of contemporaneity sublimated and turned into an allegorical representations of our deepest anxieties. Moreover, the aesthetic of the science fictional are felt well beyond the borders of strict genre. Perhaps this says something about the way the popular imagination is manifested in cultural objects, but what it is certain is that the technological-real is inextricably linked to the way we perceive the world.”

Andrew Frost, “The Look of The Future”, 21st Century Blog: Art in The First Decade, Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art.

Image: Mitra Tabrizian, City, London 2008, Type C photograph.