These paintings were made in conjunction with The Tomorrow Archive, and are very much a result of the archiving and research that went into it. Amidst the fictional narrative of The Tomorrow Archive I was selected by The Rebellion for Autonomous Future as their 2010 Brooklyn Liaison, supposedly because my work spoke to their fight against a prescriptive future - but it's my fight, and these are my results.

      Beginning with Utopia via Media, I literally mapped out various imaginings of the perfect world, as it has come to be defined in Western culture - where perfect technology brings perfect happiness - literally stitching maps together to create a comprehensive vision. Including landmarks from the Jetsons, Superman and Buckminster Fuller, the map builds on original city plans form Thomas More's Utopia to establish what this perfect world might look like. Further works here show how this presrciptive future seeps into reality, instilling individual imagination with a set vocabulary. The Great Human Past Time shows how humanity spends its time: crudely burning into the natural world images that it takes from a framework of mass media. Each DVD has burned into it the front and back views of present-day consumer items that appear futuristic

    The result of my investigation of the Future is Unexpected Circumstance - where an astronaut from 2001: A Space Odyssey views an impaled companion and his futuristic world falls apart into rough patches of color. The agent of destruction is a rudimentary spear, signifying a more authentic existence through individual choice. Handmade objects do not exist in the Future, and here they disrupt it. Finally Other Paths for the City allows us a glimpse into an alternative future, undefined by prescribed aesthetics and beliefs. I do not reject technology outright, but simply wish to maintain human agency in whatever world it brings.

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Please contact me at beandrew@gmail.com

All work and images © Benjamin Andrew 2009-2010