With so much wrong with the world, I come to the gallery hoping for anger, tears and shit (see previous post). At the Barbican last week I found optimism. It was hard to stomach.
In Other Worlds is an immersive exhibition from filmmaker and architect Liam Young. It comprises of environmental design, spoken word, model making, panoramic animation, projection mapping, and documentary film. It snakes around the Curve Gallery and out through a darkened car park. I found it so difficult to take, I spent over 90 minutes and would have stayed longer had there been time.
As an immersive experience, it was perhaps incomplete. There was plenty to look at and listen to, but it wasn’t fully enveloping; and the final, temporary, cubic space where imagery could be found in 360 degrees (and along x, y and z axes) was disrupted by gaping entrance and exit; though the floor was alive with roiling seas at one point the ceiling was just another dark void.
The lightly makeshift arrangements did not stop one visitor move illuminated hands as if casting LSD trails; this multi-dimensional invite to engage the imagination is indeed quite trippy. The filmic centrepiece is psychedelic, the premise is utopian, the prevailing genre of audio was speculative; and from the open pit mining scene to the vertical cityscape with tumbling greenery, the models held me fascinated in their detail.
By part two, in which visitors were invited to watch actual reports from existing projects that are already re-engineering our planet for a liveable future at some unspecified time, we got the clear message that now was the time for action to avoid extinction with a planet-wide solution to the climate emergency and Anthropocene damage. But this individual requirement has existed for 20 or 30 exhausting years now.
The discursive structure of the exhibition runs a bit like this: imagine a world where all digital tech is recycled, and where oceans are cared for using indigenous wisdom, where self-contained mega-cities allow the rest of the planet to heal; just imagine all that and then take a look at these films that show projects where this is slowly becoming a reality, since some of this stuff is already underway. Cool, huh?
The spoken word grabbed me, padded headphones did feel immersive, and the stories, read by the likes of actors Maxine Peake and Richard Ayoade, were a mixed bag. But they gave an additional layer of messaging, an architecture of ideas, and a chance to partake in the innocence of ‘storytime’.
In short, the vision and the worldmaking on show at the Barbican is very impressive. It was both a tantalising and an absorbing experience where time flew away. But despite the bright positivity of this show, I struggle to see how the notion of a mega-city housing 10 billion people could result in the peace, justice, equity and mutual understanding we need in order to unite in the service of projects like these.
Liam Young brings a life In Other Worlds nearer, which might be a place to start. He doesn’t say how we might stop the raging monsters of capital from snatching these futures away? Don’t we need to fix the world before we fix the planet?
In Other Worlds is on display at Curve, Barbican until September 6 2026.
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