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Olczak, Susie 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9615-5514, David, Karen, Locke, Lana, Thompson, Mimei, Elton, Liz and Miyake, Yuki
(2021)
Fragments of a Lost Future.
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Abstract
Fragments of a Lost Future presented work by five artists who considered themes of the non-human, the city, fiction, the passage of time and sustainability to question the nature of our current reality. The planet’s mineral, energy and agriculture resources had been efficiently, and even ruthlessly, exploited. They had harnessed the energy of the atom and deciphered the molecular codes that oversaw their own reproduction. Despite these achievements, the people of this planet had in other respects scarcely raised themselves above the lowest level of barbarism. The enjoyment of pain and violence was as natural to them as the air they breathed. J.G. Ballard ["Report From an Obscure Planet", 1992] The fears of the near future described in J.G. Ballard’s science fiction novels were now our reality. Earth had long been accustomed to the phenomenon of shifting temperatures and to changes in the degree of saturation of its soils: the Sahara Desert had cycled through wet and dry periods since the last Ice Age 12,000 years ago, and over tens of millions of years solar radiation energy had changed the earth’s surface. But now human existence was threatened through the results of our own activity, as we hastened the progress of desertification. We knew we could and should promote measures to slow this progression, yet on the contrary, we maintained a damaging momentum. Even a one degree rise in temperature would have caused negative effects, such as increased coral bleaching, damage from floods and storms, and changes in the distribution of vectors for infectious diseases. The inhabitants of our soils, the earth’s microbiome, fungi, bacteria, algae, protozoa and worms, were essential to our survival, yet mainstream agricultural practices that used pesticides made vegetables toxic, while the overuse of antibiotics and fungicides depleted future resilience. When corporations and politicians were busy monopolising airspace and arguing amongst themselves, whose voice would communicate this urgent crisis? We went about our daily lives with our heads partly buried in the sand, often too busy to fully engage with the unfolding polycrisis. Activists rightly conveyed outrage, but the question remained whether these urgencies could be embedded into everyday life. In ‘Report from an Obscure Planet’, Ballard described the critical state of the Earth as viewed from another place. White Conduit Projects brought together these five artists who bravely and playfully incorporated this sense of crisis into the core and surface of their work. Starting with their everyday surroundings, they attempted new ways of communication, quietly bringing a Ballardian nuance to artworks that inhabited domestic space.
| Item Type: | Show/Exhibition |
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| Related URLs: | |
| Subjects: | N Fine Arts > N Visual arts (General) For photography, see TR |
| Divisions: | Schools and Research Institutes > School of Arts, Culture and Environment |
| Depositing User: | Susie Olczak |
| Date Deposited: | 26 Mar 2026 16:20 |
| Last Modified: | 26 Mar 2026 16:20 |
| URI: | https://eprints.glos.ac.uk/id/eprint/15962 |
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