Christopher Woodward
Rubble with a Cause
Tate Britain’s exhibition ‘Ruin Lust’, which runs until 18 May, ends with Gerard Byrne’s film 1984 and Beyond, in which the artist restaged a Playboy article from 1963 that asked science-fiction writers to imagine a day in the life of an urban male of the future. Made between 2005 and 2007, it’s a brilliant piece that draws on a creepy text in which sexism crackles like static electricity on acrylic suits. The authors can imagine new types of keyboard, wristwatches and ‘euphoric cigarettes’ but not a female boss. Women and martinis never change.
Futuristic fantasies are predictable, invariably involving streets in the sky, more leisure in the day, one-piece clothing and capsule food. Byrne’s piece might equally well open an exhibition which tells us that the past is much more surprising than the future.
The co-curator is Brian Dillon, a writer whose achievement has been to make ruins relevant to a new and post-Ballardian generation of artists. Ballard’s 2006 article ‘A Handful of Dust’ responded to Jane and Louise Wilson’s photographs of
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'There are at least two dozen members of the House of Commons today whose names I cannot read without laughing because I know what poseurs and place-seekers they are.'
From the archive, Christopher Hitchens on the Oxford Union.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/mother-of-unions
Chuffed to be on the Curiosity Pill 2020 round-up for my @Lit_Review piece on swimming, which I cannot wait to get back to after 10+ months away https://literaryreview.co.uk/different-strokes https://twitter.com/RNGCrit/status/1351922254687383553
'The authors do not shrink from spelling out the scale of the killings when the Rhodesians made long-distance raids on guerrilla camps in Mozambique and Zambia.'
Xan Smiley on how Rhodesia became Zimbabwe.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/what-the-secret-agent-saw