SCI-Arc Unveils 'Views of Planet City' for PST ART: Art & Science Collide, Presented by Getty
Liam Young.
For Getty’s PST ART: Art & Science Collide, SCI-Arc presents Views of Planet City—calling for a radical re-envisioning of a sustainable planetary future, opening Friday, September 13 in the SCI-Arc Gallery and Saturday, September 14 at the Pacific Design Center Gallery.
Views of Planet City is among more than 60 exhibitions and programs presented as part of PST ART—Getty's landmark regional event that returns in September 2024 with its latest edition, PST ART: Art & Science Collide, highlighting the intersections of art and science, both past and present. For more information, please visit pst.art.
The exhibition is based on lead curator Liam Young's transmedia project Planet City that explores implications of Edward O. Wilson’s “Half-Earth” proposal to remove at least 50% of our planet’s land and marine areas from human use and set them aside for preservation and regeneration of biodiversity. In Young's sci-fi vision, humanity has retreated into Planet City, a single city housing 10 billion people—the projected human population of Earth in 2050—surrendering most of the world to a global-scaled wilderness and the return of stolen lands.
Damjan Jovanovic.
Views of Planet City premieres new components of Young’s evolving body of work along with interrelated projects by SCI-Arc faculty Jennifer Chen, John Cooper, Damjan Jovanovic, and Angelica Lorenzi. Critically and imaginatively examining the effects emerging out of Planet City's wildly speculative but plausible premise, Views of Planet City challenges dystopian visions of the future, offering both an immersive, interactive experience and a blueprint for a sustainably urbanized planet. A project of radical optimism driven by cinematic sensibility and architectural thinking; Views of Planet City conjures a new planetary imaginary for our age of urban transitions.
Works in the exhibition include films set within the city itself as well as those weaving the city’s histories from satellite surveys above, large scale movie miniature models and intimate interior occupations, participatory building workshops, costumes and masks evoking the intermingling of world cultures within the city, a video game simulation modelling the role that AI may play in supporting the recovery of planetary ecosystems, and ceremonial artefacts drawn from new rituals of nature, all set alongside the research and documentary material that undergirds this collective speculation. Staged within an exhibition architecture by OFICINA.LA, Views of Planet City represents a collaborative effort of multiple voices and cultures supported by an international team of acclaimed environmental scientists, theorists, and advisors. In Views of Planet City we see that adequate responses to climate change no longer constitute a technological problem, but rather an ideological one, rooted in culture and politics.
Liam Young
“Views of Planet City explores how centuries of colonization, globalization, and never-ending economic extraction and expansionism could be reversed to solve climate change and the exploitation of both natural and human resources” says Young, who is also Coordinator of SCI-Arc’s groundbreaking Fiction and Entertainment postgraduate program.
Curated by Liam Young and organized by Namik Mackic, Views of Planet City will be presented simultaneously at two venues to reach audiences on LA’s east and west sides: the Pacific Design Center Gallery in the Cube (formerly operated by MOCA), and the SCI-Arc Gallery in the heart of the SCI-Arc campus in the Arts District, Downtown LA.
Exhibition design: OFICINA.LA
Structural engineer: Nous Engineering
Special thanks to Reflective Concepts for material support
Graphic identity: Neasden Control Centre
About PST ART:
PST ART is a groundbreaking cultural collaboration. Every five years, PST ART unites hundreds of artists around a single, electrifying theme at more than 60 exhibition spaces. While the theme is different each time, the heart of PST ART is always the distinctive cultural identity of Southern California, and the universal hunger for artistic and intellectual discovery. In a region famed for its films and theme parks, PST ART provides a different kind of gripping experience— and the most distinctively Southern Californian of all.