Liminal State – Collaboration with Yvonne Odell

Today’s reality was yesterday’s fiction. But what was once perhaps an optimistic vision may now no longer be feasible, viable or supportable…

“Predictions of the future are a ‘Tomorrowland’ fantasy. Arising from the experiences of our own histories, they strive to ensure a continued development of the technologies that will improve our quality of living. Sitting in a ‘liminal state’, there is always an uncertainty as to what will become real what what will remain fiction – both products of the imagination that have come to grace our cinemas and TV screens throughout the years.

Sustainability must be feasible in order for it to work, and by looking at the various predictions from the past and present day, we may find trends that lead us to draw more resolute visions of tomorrow’s world. Though society is ever-changing, and from it, new technologies continually emerging, there persists a skepticism of the likelihood for these ideas to succeed in becoming practical solutions. We find ourselves questioning their probability, revealing our own stances towards creating a more sustainable future.

The found footage, purposefully degraded to imply transience and interchangeability, offers an insight into the similarities and the differences found within old and new ideas, revealing some of the enduring hopes and aspirations of various generations. It highlights Hollywood’s presence as a device for inspiring technological evolution, moving ideas from fictional possibility to palpable reality. As an arbitrator of technological advancements, it plays with the social anxieties of a people and presents idealized solutions to them. The montaged footage both contrasts and compliments, perhaps hinting towards a potential slowdown of desire for innovation, maybe inferring a more grounded, pessimistic outlook of the future, where notions of integration and ease of living are met with very real social and economical barriers.”

LIMINAL STATE:

Video, 4min 19sec, colour, w/sound, 2014.

To be screened on either a single large monitor, or multiple smaller monitors.

Created by Yvonne Odell and David Testill.

Available to watch online at WWW.VIMEO.COM
URL Link: https://vimeo.com/84829083