A Hollywood Film in which Climate Change is Averted, Textiles, 220x195cm, 2018; Installed at Jerwood Space for Survey, Oct - Dec 2018 (photo by Anna Arca)
‘Chris Alton’s banner A Hollywood Film in which Climate Change is Averted challenges Hollywood’s propensity towards dystopian science fiction, and suggests – as [George] Monbiot and [Rebecca] Solnit write – that we need to imagine a better tomorrow before we can start to improve our prospects.’ George Vasey, Burlington Contemporary, Nov 2018
How does a cinema-scape dominated by apocalyptic depictions of climate change curtail our ability to imagine its aversion? Popular media frames climate change as inevitable; what if it didn't? Would we be more optimistic? Would we feel we had more agency? Would we act?
A Hollywood Film in which Climate Change is Averted calls on our collective responsibility to address major social and political issues that will impact future generations; and seeks to address how cultural parameters curtail our ability to reimagine our world. The banner depicts a cinema that claims to be screening this yet to be made film. The building itself utilises aspects of modernist and science fiction aesthetics, as a way of gesturing towards alternative futures.
This cultural framing of climate change allows for new imagined possibilities, considers how cultural products and systems shape what is possible, and asks how collective responsibility could address larger-scale issues driven by a capitalist, growth-orientated economy.
Press & Texts:
Dissenting Voices, Disobedient Gestures, Iris Aspinall Priest, Jerwood Arts, 09/2019
“A showcase and a kind of challenge” Survey: Reviewed, Mike Pinnington, The Double Negative, 23/06/2019
London’s emerging artists at Jerwood, George Vasey, Burlington Contemporary, 07/11/2018
Commissioned by:
Jerwood Arts
With thanks to:
Eleanor Meade
Funded by:
Jerwood Charitable Foundation
