Yorkshire Artspace - June 2019 - What would Europe look like in 200 years?

Never-land-Sheffield project was a project that asked the public 'What would Europe look like in 200 years?', situated in Yorkshire artspace/ persistence Works. Aiming to create new work through discussion, collage, and large scale intervention, it wanted to offer an opportunity to collaboratively add work that considers what a positive future would look like, through a speculative look on utopian ideas for the future in the aftermath of a post-Brexit society.

" We will learn to share more, reducing wealth inequality "

In collaboration with my friend and artist Alice Pool, situated in Yorkshire Artspace for two days, researching, talking to participators and collaborators, collecting and planning an installation for the space in response to the public project.

" Capitalism will be talked out of historic age we will have moved into the age of collaboration "

Drawing on ideas of dystopian survivalism, we began to speculate about alternative technologies of communication, drifting across timelines of the past to the future through an object focused on a method of communication to the future; using a time capsule as a historic cache of information, giving resources to future people, archaeologists, anthropologists, or historians - as a form collaboration across different time-scales, overlapping preservation of collective memory through the practice of preserving and preparing messages to the future.

Never-Land quotations

00:00 / 02:00

Sound piece script: sentences are taken from participating members of the public, responding to the project, asking 'what would Europe look like in 200 years?', voices layered over recorded foley.

If the heavy metals found in electronics and mobile phones are exhausted or cut down because of their environmental impacts, two-way radios, and carrier pigeons will be used for communication, transmitting and receiving a signal in short distance spaces

Cars will no longer exist, long-distance travel will be slower using solar-powered airships that fly above the clouds

The planet will never forget us

In 200 years dogs will have humans as pets

Dear future I hope I’ve been good and have a good job

Thanks to university research and ‘intelligence programs’ our important public services are now covered by sheep

People will still be making art

Taxidermy humans

Making disaster itself give evidence that the world is manageable

A world undivided

Nations states will have eroded at the centers and edges, what used to be called wars will be skirmishes; people will all feel the same so will not remember what to fight about

Chickens will act as carrier pigeons

Virtual reality will be just a phase, everyone will be interested in in feeling inside their bodies and experiencing first hand

Capitalism will be talked out of historic age we will have moved into the age of collaboration

We will learn to share more, reducing wealth inequality

The rewilding of cultivated spaces would bring back the animals and plants that have been lost, allowing them to roam freely, reconnecting us with our environment in these new wild spaces.