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Art Column

Liam Young: Planetary Redesign

Published September 30, 2023
Liam Young, from 'The Great Endeavour'

Climate anxiety is the neurosis of our age. According to a recent study, one in ten Americans report symptoms of anxiety because of global warming. For those between the ages of 16-25, the number jumps to an alarming fifty percent. In Australia, a survey of last year found that 38 percent of young people were experiencing “high psychological distress.”

Liam Young, from ‘The Great Endeavour’

Whether or not one accepts the wisdom of statistics, these figures are going nowhere but up. NASA just announced that 2023 was the hottest Summer on record – a disturbing thought for the forthcoming season in the southern hemisphere. Scientists are predicting the next five years will witness sharp rises in global temperature. By now there is overwhelming evidence that climate change is real, and a vast consensus of opinion that needs no further convincing.

The big surprise is not that people are anxious and distressed, but that so many politicians, business tycoons and media commentators continue to deny or ignore the problem. No matter that every news bulletin is packed with images of floods, fires, droughts and hurricanes, the survival of life on earth remains less important than short term profit.

There’s a growing tendency to blame science for getting us into this mess, but science doesn’t force us to cling to our lifestyle and luxuries when sacrifices are necessary. Neither can it be replaced by ‘alternative’ forms of knowledge, which may have worked for small communities in ages past but can never satisfy the needs of today’s world. If science bears some responsibilty for the problem, only science offfers a glimmer of hope.

Liam Young, from ‘Planet City’

All of this is only too clear to Liam Young (b. 1979), an Australian architect and multi-media artist based in Los Angeles. Over the past decade, Young has produced a series of films and performance works that have brought him to worldwide attention, although – like the globally acclaimed AV artist, Lynette Wallworth – he remains relatively unknown in his own country.

The National Gallery of Victoria is addressing that neglect with the exhibition Liam Young: Planetary Redesign. It consists of two large-screen film presentations: Planet City, which was first shown during the 2020 NGV Triennial, and a new piece, The Great Endeavour. The former presents a visionary scheme for a city, based in the Amazon, that will house the entire population of the world – projected to reach 10 billion by 2050. Were the Planet City built along the same lines as today’s most high-density megalopolises it would occupy 0.2 percent of the world’s surface. The remaining area would be allowed to regenerate, in preparation for a day when people would be able to return to their native lands.

Liam Young, from ‘The Great Endeavour’

It sounds like a complete science fiction fantasy, but Young and his team have calculated all the logistics, which are listed on the cover of the small book published as part of the project: 1 city; 10,157,030,257 people; 221,376 sq. kms of building; 121,307 sq. kms of hydro electric canals; 49,445,671,570 solar panels, and so on.

The second film, The Great Endeavour, gives visual expression to the gargantuan effort we would have to make to extract enough carbon from the atmosphere to offset the quantities already accumulated. It’s a vision of gigantic windfarms set in the oceans, of solar panels laid out amid immense swathes of desert, of a worldwide campaign to harness natural energy sources and begin the repair of the planet. It would be “the largest engineering project in human history, equivalent in size to that of the entire fossil fuel industry.”

Liam Young, from 'The Great Endeavour'
Liam Young, from ‘The Great Endeavour’

Young knows people will scoff at these proposals but maintains that both could be realised if the political will existed. He argues that “climate change is no longer a technological problem, but rather an ideological one, rooted in culture and politics.”

Given the fractured nature of politics today, Young’s “if” looms as large as the planet itself. It’s hard to imagine Vladimir Putin putting aside his imperial ambitions to attend to the problem of climate change. China and India are not likely to pause their campaigns for economic growth. In America, big corporations and their political enablers are hell-bent on scaling back environmental regulations. Bolsonaro’s destruction of the Brazilian rainforest has been halted, but there are plenty of his supporters to continue the process.

In Australia too, there is no taste for the kind of radical action Young envisages. We are addicted to the unsustainable and ready to punish any government that impinges on our comforts by means of new environmental strictures or increased taxation.

Liam Young, from ‘The Great Endeavour’

To halt our march towards the abyss we would have to change human nature, which seems to be terminally self-centred and short-sighted. We are like Pharoah, who endured the ten plagues of Egypt before he got the message. A majority of people on the planet may have to personally suffer the catastrophes of flood and fire before enlightenment dawns. Even then, as the response to the pandemic showed, there will be millions who believe that all their troubles are due to the Deep State or some other nefarious conspiracy.

In these two extraordinary films, Young proceeds “as if” – as if we were rational beings who could take all necessary steps to ensure our own survival; as if we could all learn to live together, regardless of creed and colour; as if we could forgo the superior emotional dividend that hate delivers over love; as if we could take responsibility and stop looking for someone else to blame. It’s been said, wisely, that nobody ever went in search of a scapegoat and failed to find one.

Liam Young, from ‘Planet City’

One of the most optimistic aspects of Planet City is the idea that people speaking some 7,047 languages could host 2,555 cultural festivals and holidays every year. It would be a perpetual party, suggested in the film by figures wearing extravagant tribal costumes dancing against a backdrop of densely packed apartments. Living cheek-by-jowl, engaged in the same quest for survival, the inhabitants of Planet City would have to get along with one another. It’s an appealing thought that the inevitable tribalism that grows in such environments might be channelled into celebrations rather than confrontations.

Residents of this 10-billion-strong city would need something to keep their spirits up, because the gloomy towers made from recycled material, each housing thousands of people, look like sets from Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982). This was the film that provided a template for Hollywood’s new favourite vision of the future – as a dark and dangerous slum. One wonders how many people would prefer to perish rather than give up their suburban palaces for an apartment in this multicultural jungle.

Liam Young, from ‘The Great Endeavour’

With any vision of the future, artists and futurologists (and Young is both), generally have to choose between the utopian and the dystopian. Technological progress is a constant, but we don’t know whether it will make life immeasurably better or worse. The rapid evolution of AI has given a rocket boost to that dilemma, as thoughts of curing cancer are weighed against the image of Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator.

Both films in Young’s Planetary Redesign owe a huge constructive debt to AI, which made it possible to create astonishing, realistic images that would have taken years if attempted by more conventional means. Known for saying “an architect’s skills are completely wasted on making buildings,” Young is a big thinker who chooses to explore the slim possibility that we just might get it right, rather than the high probablity we’ll crash and burn. He believes in the power of stories to inspire and empower audiences, blending hard data with visionary science fiction. If we could all be so positive, we might yet stand a chance of rolling back the carbon canopy and book our place at the world party.

 

 

Liam Young: Planetary Redesign

National Gallery of Victoria, 19 August, 2023 – 11 February, 2024 

 

Published in the Sydney Morning Herald, 30 September, 2023