​“The future” used to be a tangible place we all looked to in hope and wonder. In the mid 1900s people sold the refrigerators of the future, wore the bathing suits of the future, listened for the wave of the future, and were subsequently struck by “Future Shock”. In 1957 Laika was earth’s first ambassador to the future, boldly going where no man (or dog) has gone before.

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On a stage quoted from Al Gore’s “An inconvenient Truth” (with a large screen at the back, and two smaller plasma screens in front) she traces the history of the future to the point where people decided to turn their gaze back towards the past. When did the promise of a brave new world become a vision of plague, mass terrorism and ecological disasters, she asks. Her own vision of the future was shaped by Oleg Gazenko, the Soviet scientist personally chose her for this historic journey.

 

This is the first part of the ongoing “Laika” series of works conceived by Lior Lerman. The illustrations were created by Saray Levin and animated by Jonathan Shohet.

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