Utopia is merely a temporary hoarding where such coming attractions are fly posted for the future. The scraps and remnants overlap each other: a forgotten snatch of library music, some frames from a promotional film, laboratory test footage, a moment at a trade fair or a flash of text from a television commercial. When the pieces fit together, we call it progress. When they don’t, we rely upon a filmmaker like Mika Taanila to make stories out of them.
A download of ‘Activate Only When Absolutely Necessary’, my essay on the extraordinary films of Finnish artist Mika Taanila is currently available from the online archive for doCUMENTA 13. It can be accessed by clicking here. Originally written for the catalogue accompanying ‘Human Engineering’, Taanila’s 2006 show at the Migros Museum in Zurich, it offers a retrospective overview of failed futures as documented in his work. It is a still from A Physical Ring, one of Mika;s films, that graces the cover of Welcome To Mars – soon to be made available as an eBook from Strange Attractor Press – more on this exciting development in due course. In the meantime, please feel to enjoy this little piece of the past – where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives.
Pictured above: front cover of the ‘Human Engineering’ catalogue, Migros Museum, 2006
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2 comments:
Just been into a Futuro House- the prototype is now in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam.
http://vimeo.com/28758765
http://vimeo.com/28761140
outside then in!
very liveable, but the seats would give a bad back after a few hours of semirecumbency
Speaking of beautifully curved architectural forms, what's latest news from Dounreay, Gair? Petrochemical pullution and nuclear radiation are indeed the new artistic forms of 21st century.
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