The Netherlands, 1992
www.rikkoster.com
Future Clouds?
Future Clouds? derrives from a fascination with our fossil based society. Within the project, Rik Koster explores how the invention of the car has changed not only the movement and speed of our daily lives, but the world’s infrastructures and our energy consumption as a whole. Although power plants that rely on fossil fuels are relatively young inventions within the history of humankind, they have had an unpreceded inpact on it.
Based on our current energy consumption, Future Clouds? presents the speculative world of ‘Smog City’: a dystopian version of Amsterdam through which Rik visualises the blind spot that we often fail to address in our daily lives. The work functions as a tryptich. Formulated through a visual thesis, his speculative world comes to life in a multimedia installation of drawings, scale models and film. This extreme vision is inserted into our reality through the creation of ‘Cloud 1’, a real fossil fuelled vehicle that confronts us with the grand finale of the fossil economies that are at the core of our society. ‘Cloud 1’ is a redesigned Renault Twingo which generates so much pollution that the driver literally drives on a cloud of smog. It’s a vehicle which makes the invisible visible and which questions: if we can see it, will we immediately want to change our current energy consumption?
Through a humorous approach, the work painfully points at the reality of our collective fossil fuel addiction. Confronted with an extreme vision , the reader and viewer are invited to reflect on our present society and the direction of our future.
What do you think our future clouds will consist of?
