What struck me most wasn't a single artwork or theme, but the realisation that the idea of a looming catastrophe is nothing new. We have always believed the end is near.
In Christianity—especially during the Reformation—people believed that disasters were punishment for immoral behaviour.
The 1800s brought fear of what industrialisation was doing to society.
In the 1900s, world wars and nuclear threats took over.
Today, climate change, AI, and totalitarian ideologies scare us.
The themes change, but fear remains.
One artwork that I looked at for a long time was Hannaleena Heiska’s Rachael #3, inspired by the first Blade Runner film.
The themes change, but fear remains.
One reason we keep returning to these doomsday scenarios is, paradoxically, comfort.
The exhibition quotes research that explains our fascination with catastrophe as a form of psychological safety.
As Brianna Wiest puts it: we worry about improbable events because they're "safe problems."
If we worry about an asteroid hitting Earth, we don’t have to deal with the conflict at work. If we focus on AI taking over the world, we can ignore the hard conversations with the neighbour.
While I easily shrug at global fears others carry, I always seem to have something to worry about. Will our cat fully heal from his injury? Will my son find work in a sector that just saw several bankruptcies? Will my business attract new clients?
The answer, of course, is that I don’t know.
If we worry about an asteroid hitting Earth, we don’t have to deal with the conflict at work. If we focus on AI taking over the world, we can ignore the hard conversations with the neighbour.
While I easily shrug at global fears others carry, I always seem to have something to worry about. Will our cat fully heal from his injury? Will my son find work in a sector that just saw several bankruptcies? Will my business attract new clients?
The answer, of course, is that I don’t know.
That's where trust comes in. Instead of doubt, we need faith in life and in our ability to handle what comes. (I think it sounds even better in Swedish: vi behöver tillit istället för tvivel.)
One artwork that I looked at for a long time was Hannaleena Heiska’s Rachael #3, inspired by the first Blade Runner film.
I only recently saw the film, which was made in 1982 and set in the then-distant future of 2019. It’s gritty and dark, and while it had flying cars, it didn’t predict smartphones.
No matter how much we think about the future and try to predict it, there’s always something we can’t imagine yet.
We don't know what's coming, but if we can drop the fear, we might see that whatever comes can be even better than what we can currently imagine.
Good conclusion and I agree
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