our last futures
On the third semester of my master's, we had a course titled "Heritage Management", of which Prof. Guillermo Aranda-Mena had given us a task to read a book and try to express it visually through series of images. My book of choice was Last Futures: Nature, Technology and the End of Architecture by Douglas Murphy. The book explores the "architecture of the future" – an avant-garde architecture that had emerged in the 1960s. These forward thinking architects had devised new forms of thinking of a better future, both in society and in architecture, due to the crises that had happened during their period of formation. Though they are "lost", Douglas Murphy tries to bring them back to live archaeologically through his book.
The four series of images I have produced are my personal interpretation of his book, of our contemporary futures, through my eyes and experiences.
I. Humanity
An edited black and white image of Earthrise, by astronaut William Anders during Apollo 8 mission. In the place of the far side of the moon, Buckminister Fuller's geodesic dome of US Pavilion at Expo 67. Outside the familiar sphere of influence of our home, while setting out for the stars, with the means of science, we discovered Spaceship Earth, we discovered humanity.
II. Exploration
A composition of three superimposed images: the lunar module eagle of Apollo 11 taken by the LRO, Kenzo Tange's Tokyo Bay Plan, and Le Corbusier's Ville Radieuse. All three, are testaments of humanity's willingness to dream, to explore our own futures.
III. Monument
The Biosphere 2, made as a vivarium for space colonization experiments, by Phil Hawes placed on the Martian landscape taken by the Perseverance rover. A small monument housing Earth's biosphere, tainting the pristine alien world. In the background, an image of Saturn, taken by the Cassini spacecraft, which has now made it its own resting space. All worlds, has been touched by the hands of men, our monuments are our interventions in grand course of time.
IV. Apocalypse
This time again, Fuller's US Pavilion, on fire, inside the fireball of the Trinity nuclear test. Remember the famous quote by Oppenheimer of the Bhagavad Gita during the testing of this new destructive power of nuclear technology? We have tried to create our own futures, yet sometimes we forget that we may also become our own deaths. May mankind be able to guide itself away from the inevitable destruction of the all-mighty Time.
