Future Fiction

To Liam Young, being a speculative architect means “making films and telling stories about the architectural urban and cultural implications of emerging technologies,” as he said during his lecture “Worlds Less Traveled,” which closed Yale’s week-long Retrofuturisms symposium. The LA-based architect-filmmaker presented his work as a counter-balance to prevailing media narratives, and showed clips ranging from illegal drone footage of lithium mining in Bolivia—fueled by Elon Musk’s recent acquisition of the resource—to an artificial intelligence assistant’s love letter to the citizens of Seoul. Young’s worlds less traveled are full of post-industrial waste, dystopian cities with bottomless tower-scapes, hazy atmospheres, and rendered special effects shown in panning drone-eye shots. Daylight is scarce; carnival costumes, animal-human hybrids, and glittering confetti are abundant. The subjects of Young’s investigations—networks of extraction, exploitation, and information circulation—are hardly new to film or academic criticism, though their quality of production, and …