Lost in Space

 Mother Earth is pregnant for the third time, for ya’ll have knocked her up. I have tasted the maggots in the minds of the universe, I was not offended, for I knew I had to rise above it all or drown in my own shit.

– Maggot Brain, Funkadelic, 1971

Today, science-fiction is such an integral part of cinema (and television) entertainment that it now seems almost impossible to consider one without the other. The legacy of cinema’s ‘sci-fi’ narratives –‘man’s’ inalienable desire to explore and conquer inhabited and uninhabited worlds – owes as much to literary figures such as Jules Verne and HG Wells as they do to cinema. In different ways, both Verne and Wells used science-fiction to tell stories which were commentaries on the present; namely the rapid technological and industrial advancements of the late 19th century. Where Verne’s vision tended towards a celebration of technological ‘progress’, Wells’ futuristic novels viewed technological ‘progress’ with a greater degree of scepticism, as a threat to humanity. Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) is an early example of how the allegorical powers of science-fiction would be used in cinema. Made during the rise of communist and fascist ideologies, Lang adopted Wells’ sceptical theme in his nightmarish vision of a future society in which technology governed all but the elite.

By the 1950s, with cinema (Hollywood in particular) going into ‘sci-fi’ overdrive, countless films reprised many of literature’s popular science-fiction themes: time travel, space exploration and alien invasions. This period coincided with the advent of the Cold War and the spread of paranoia, hysteria and fears of communist infiltration, Soviet espionage and nuclear annihilation. Nothing more typified this hysteria than the McCarthy witch-hunts in the United States where it was considered fair game to relentlessly hound anyone and everyone thought to be either a Communist, Communist sympathiser or, in some way, a threat to government. Against this political backdrop, films such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and It Came from Outer Space– in which humans had succumbed to alien invaders – represented allegories for a prevailing climate of doom and fear. (1953) reflected how elements of ‘sci-fi’ cinema

Using this cinematic legacy as its anchor, the exhibition Alien Nation featured 12 internationally-based artists (including the late Hamad Butt) working with painting, photography, video, film and sculpture. Monitors in the ICA’s lower gallery played exerts from these classic ‘sci-fi’ films, whilst a series of ‘original film posters from 1950s sci-fi cinema classics’ lined the ICA’s concourse space. If this archival material illustrated how barmy the 1950s were, the inclusion of Orson Welles’ 1938 radio adaptation of HG Wells’ The War of the Worlds, originally broadcast in ‘real-time’, was a reminder that the fear of alien invasion pre-dated the onset of the Cold War. Welles had to apologise for sparking hysteria amongst radio audiences who believed the world was about to be taken over.

In the exhibition brochure we are told that the show explored ‘the complex relationship between science fiction, race and contemporary art.’ We are also informed that, ‘The artworks on display expose a disturbing contemporary narrative in which the media perpetuate a terror of “invasion” from immigrants and asylum seekers (indeed any racial, cultural or ethnic “other”), positioning such “outsiders” as the dominant threat to both family and national stability.’

Dominating one wall of the lower gallery space was Brown and Proud (2006), a large monochrome drawing by American artist Mario Ybarra Jr. Amongst the mêlée of visual references to gang culture, graffiti art and the political mural was the unlikely coupling of Star Wars’ Chewbacca and the legendary Mexican revolutionary, Emiliano Zapata. Where Chewbacca was portrayed smoking a cigar and sporting a baseball cap, Zapata stared out at us, head wrapped in a bandana, performing the sort of hand salute associated with Los Angeles gang-life. The exhibition brochure informed us that for Ybarra ‘this partnership represents the coalition of political revolt and popular culture as a strategy for resistance against more conventional and political structures.’ Despite such succinctness, it was hard not to wonder if the curators or artist considered the gallery to be outside these same structures. Less physically imposing within the gallery, but, nonetheless effective in its simplicity, was Kori Newkirk’s beaded curtain. Made up from countless black pony beads held together with strips of artificial braided hair, Merk (2006) depicted a mosaic-like image of an ‘iconic suburban landscape’. Disrupting what ordinarily would have been an almost benign monotone image was a yellow shaft of light which cut through the its centre, as if to suggest the arrival (or departure) of something untoward.

Henna Nadeem’s, A Picture Book of Britain (2006) consisted of a series of photographs of the British countryside, taken from books produced by Country Life magazine from the late 1930s to the 1980s. What we are looking at – picturesque Britain – is familiar yet, also at times, visually impenetrable. Each photograph has been transformed by way of digital montage in which an original image is overlaid with an abstract pattern usually cut from a duplicate image. Nadeem’s patterns are themselves derived from various artistic and cultural traditions, such as William Morris designs or Japanese and Islamic motifs. Although roughly continuing in the same vein as Nadeem’s previous work, when seen in situ (as opposed to reproduction), however, one notable difference is revealed. Where Nadeem’s earlier collages were one-off works – each pattern individually hand-cut and collaged over an ‘original’ image –this new body of work has been entirely digitally produced; gone are the marks made by the scalpel, the joins, tears, awkward fidgety cuts and montage. Although some of the ‘unique’ charm evident in Nadeem’s earlier work has been lost to technology, the digital process makes way for an even more fanciful interplay between pattern and image. In keeping with her previous works, these digital montages do still possess a strange visual allure. However, the relationship between Nadeem’s work and the show’s theme did come across as slightly tenuous, even if the curators felt compelled to introduce Nadeem as a ‘British Muslim’ who had grown up ‘in semi-rural Yorkshire.’ Such a description appeared to function more for the benefit of the show’s thesis than the artist’s work.

View more information at: http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/lost-space

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