Into the Unknown: A Journey Through Science Fiction, Barbican, London
A volume of material on display in this exploration of science fiction in art, design, film and literature
Is science fiction about spaceships or about people? When we are lost in other worlds of multiple moons and alien forms, are we learning more about ourselves?
Some argue that the genre has exhausted itself, foundering on the shores of technological salvation and climate disaster. Others are keen to take it back to its pulp roots, excluding those who have made the genre a fertile ground for more political kinds of speculation in recent years.
To take on the topic of science fiction is not only to embrace a relentless desire to imagine the future of humanity, but also to get involved in unfinished arguments between contemporary humans that are played out in our ideas of other worlds.
Curator Patrick Gyger is keen to address this challenge. The show he’s curated at the Barbican, Into the Unknown: A Journey through Science Fiction takes its title from a 1973 collection of stories edited by fiction writer Terry Carr, and makes its way around the Curve gallery in four themed sections.
The first, Extraordinary Voyages, offers us science fiction’s prehistory, co-opting the works of Jonathan Swift and Francis Bacon into the canon of prescient literature. This is no great innovation, but with Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs in the mix, represented by historical texts and contemporary artists’ models, you pick up the sense that the rise of science fiction as a literary genre owes as much to colonialism as to technology.
Both new lands and new worlds Frontiers, a display of robots and disturbing props from David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ. The power of computers to rewrite our vision of the future is presented in two moving image works – Terence Broad’s version of Blade Runner reimagined by a neural network, and a short film called Sunspring, a one-note joke scripted by artificial intelligence and acted by humans.
Into the Unknown makes a few genuinely imaginative connections beyond the realms of the genre. Outsider artist Royal Robertson’s invective-laden futurescapes link the individual and collective imaginations, and a display of aerospace magazine advertisements from the late 1950s shows how commercial industries readying themselves for the space race were already reusing the visual tropes of science fiction. But once again, these tiny glimpses are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of images and artefacts.
Into the Unknown is presented as a touring show, following the template set by Game On and 2014’s Digital Revolutions. Designed to travel the world (it will be staged at the Brandts Museum of Art and Visual Culture in Denmark and Onassis Cultural Centre in Athens, Greece, before embarking on an international tour), it is nevertheless perfectly showcased at the Barbican itself, where it can spill out into the public areas.
An impressive film and events programme adds another dimension to the exhibition.
With its own screening space, Larissa Sansour’s magnificent short film, In the Future, They Ate from the Finest Porcelain, gives viewers the opportunity to become fully absorbed in its narrative of a resistance movement creating fictional archaeological evidence of a lost culture.
Isaac Julien’s tribute to African-American science fiction writer Octavia Butler plays in the cafe foyer and Trevor Paglen’s sinister mirrored Prototype for a Nonfunctional Satellite hangs in a lightwell. If you can successfully navigate the Barbican’s lifts you will find the Pit theatre occupied by Conrad Shawcross’s eerie shadow sculpture, In Light of
the Machine.
Given room to breathe, these works evoke a more contemplative and reflective mode of science fiction, a zone of liberation from the here and now. Back in the Curve, the frequencies are still jammed. Into the Unknown hasn’t failed to rise to the challenge of creating a wide-ranging and inclusive vision of science fiction. It’s just sometimes difficult to listen to everyone at once.
Danny Birchall is the digital content manager of the Wellcome Collection in London
Cost Undisclosed
Main funders City of London; Barbican International Enterprises co-production partners – Brandts Museum of Art and Visual Culture, Denmark, Onassis Cultural Centre-Athens, Greece; Reed Smith LLP
Exhibition design Ab Rogers Design
Interpretation Ab Rogers Design
Graphic design Praline
Display cases MER Services
Installation Whitewall; in house
Lighting Studio ZNA
Media design Harmonic Kinetic
Contractor MER Services
Exhibition ends 1 September
Admission £14.50. Free entry for Museums Association members Mondays to Wednesdays
Some argue that the genre has exhausted itself, foundering on the shores of technological salvation and climate disaster. Others are keen to take it back to its pulp roots, excluding those who have made the genre a fertile ground for more political kinds of speculation in recent years.
To take on the topic of science fiction is not only to embrace a relentless desire to imagine the future of humanity, but also to get involved in unfinished arguments between contemporary humans that are played out in our ideas of other worlds.
Curator Patrick Gyger is keen to address this challenge. The show he’s curated at the Barbican, Into the Unknown: A Journey through Science Fiction takes its title from a 1973 collection of stories edited by fiction writer Terry Carr, and makes its way around the Curve gallery in four themed sections.
The first, Extraordinary Voyages, offers us science fiction’s prehistory, co-opting the works of Jonathan Swift and Francis Bacon into the canon of prescient literature. This is no great innovation, but with Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs in the mix, represented by historical texts and contemporary artists’ models, you pick up the sense that the rise of science fiction as a literary genre owes as much to colonialism as to technology.
Both new lands and new worlds Frontiers, a display of robots and disturbing props from David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ. The power of computers to rewrite our vision of the future is presented in two moving image works – Terence Broad’s version of Blade Runner reimagined by a neural network, and a short film called Sunspring, a one-note joke scripted by artificial intelligence and acted by humans.
Into the Unknown makes a few genuinely imaginative connections beyond the realms of the genre. Outsider artist Royal Robertson’s invective-laden futurescapes link the individual and collective imaginations, and a display of aerospace magazine advertisements from the late 1950s shows how commercial industries readying themselves for the space race were already reusing the visual tropes of science fiction. But once again, these tiny glimpses are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of images and artefacts.
Into the Unknown is presented as a touring show, following the template set by Game On and 2014’s Digital Revolutions. Designed to travel the world (it will be staged at the Brandts Museum of Art and Visual Culture in Denmark and Onassis Cultural Centre in Athens, Greece, before embarking on an international tour), it is nevertheless perfectly showcased at the Barbican itself, where it can spill out into the public areas.
An impressive film and events programme adds another dimension to the exhibition.
With its own screening space, Larissa Sansour’s magnificent short film, In the Future, They Ate from the Finest Porcelain, gives viewers the opportunity to become fully absorbed in its narrative of a resistance movement creating fictional archaeological evidence of a lost culture.
Isaac Julien’s tribute to African-American science fiction writer Octavia Butler plays in the cafe foyer and Trevor Paglen’s sinister mirrored Prototype for a Nonfunctional Satellite hangs in a lightwell. If you can successfully navigate the Barbican’s lifts you will find the Pit theatre occupied by Conrad Shawcross’s eerie shadow sculpture, In Light of
the Machine.
Given room to breathe, these works evoke a more contemplative and reflective mode of science fiction, a zone of liberation from the here and now. Back in the Curve, the frequencies are still jammed. Into the Unknown hasn’t failed to rise to the challenge of creating a wide-ranging and inclusive vision of science fiction. It’s just sometimes difficult to listen to everyone at once.
Danny Birchall is the digital content manager of the Wellcome Collection in London
Project data
Cost Undisclosed
Main funders City of London; Barbican International Enterprises co-production partners – Brandts Museum of Art and Visual Culture, Denmark, Onassis Cultural Centre-Athens, Greece; Reed Smith LLP
Exhibition design Ab Rogers Design
Interpretation Ab Rogers Design
Graphic design Praline
Display cases MER Services
Installation Whitewall; in house
Lighting Studio ZNA
Media design Harmonic Kinetic
Contractor MER Services
Exhibition ends 1 September
Admission £14.50. Free entry for Museums Association members Mondays to Wednesdays