In 2019, the year of the future in films such as Blade Runner and Akira, we find ourselves stuck in a world where cyberpunk fictions have become a reality: our bodies have merged with our devices; our society is beholden to unchecked corporate greed; our sprawling cities are starkly divided between haves and have-nots. Decades after its emergence as a dystopian vision of the technological future, the distinct visuality of the cyberpunk genre—passionately explored and developed in cinema, video games, manga, animation, and graphic novels at the time—has settled on our present, leaving science fiction in an awkward relationship to the future. Instead of forward-facing narratives, science fiction is dominated by crisis modes and fantasies of perpetual disaster—set not in the far-flung future, but today. 
 
Phantom Plane, Cyberpunk in the Year of the Future examines how the genre’s aesthetics and futurisms have also bled into art and visual culture. The exhibition centres around what the influential science fiction author William Gibson called “the meta-city,” a sprawling urban space just as virtual as it is real. Whether through spectacular panoramas of virtual mega cities, or fleeting snapshots of their alluring underworlds and dissonant denizens, the exhibition explores life in the meta-city, and how the cyber metropolis has transformed from a fantastic metaphor for life in the future into an inescapable, looping present.
 
In some of the artists’ works on view, the city—as well as its physical bodies and attendant digital spaces—appears as a ghost of past futures. Other works find new ways to proceed, pondering how cities and their inhabitants alike might undergo “fugues of retrofitting”, as Gibson put it, to move decidedly forward in time.
Co-presented by Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College.

Artists
Nadim Abbas, Bettina von Arnim, Chan Wai Kwong, Chen Wei, Cui Jie, Aria Dean, Ho Rui An, Tishan Hsu, Tetsuya Ishida, JODI, Lee Bul, Seiko Mikami, Takehiko Nakafuji, Shinro Ohtake, Yuri Pattison, Sondra Perry, Seth Price, Jon Rafman, Hiroki Tsukuda, Nurrachmat Widyasena, Zheng Mahler

Curators
Lauren Cornell, Dawn Chan, Xue Tan, Tobias Berger with Assistant Curator Jeppe Ugelvig

October 5, 2019 – January 4, 2020

2019年，是八十年代科幻電影《銀翼殺手》和動漫《阿基拉》等所預視的未來。今天，電馭叛客的科幻構想已成為我們的當下： 人類的身體漸漸跟機器融合、社會受制於大企業的貪婪、蔓延生長的城市貧富懸殊越趨嚴重……數十年前出現的電馭叛客對未來災難的幻想一直彰顯於電影、電子遊戲、動漫和繪本小說中，並發展出獨特的美學。今天，它對末日的想像與災難性的當下交接，使科幻小說與我們未來的關係日趨尷尬。科幻小說不再瞻望未來，反而充斥著永無休止，每日發生的災難。
 
「幽靈維面——電馭叛客在未來之年」探索電馭叛客美學和未來主義如何滲透於當代藝術及視覺文化中。展覽將會展現科幻文學創派宗師William Gibson命名為「元城市」（meta-city）的概念，亦即一個不斷擴張，介於虛幻和真實的城市空間。透過展現「元城市」中的各種生活——巨型都市的全景、地下世界的快照等——我們將發現科幻小說所塑造的網絡都市魅力早已崩塌，成為當下無可迴避、無限重複的現實。
 
展覽中某部份藝術家作品所呈現的城市就像幽靈維面，仍在過往對未來的想像徘徊不去。另一些作品則尋找新的切入點，以觀望城市及其居民如何在「復古改造賦格曲」（William Gibson）的洗禮下邁向未來。
與巴德學院藝術策展研究中心共同呈獻

藝術家
唐納天 Nadim Abbas，Bettina von Arnim，陳偉江 Chan Wai Kwong，陳維 Chen Wei，崔潔 Cui Jie，Aria Dean，何銳安 Ho Rui An，徐梯善 Tishan Hsu，石田徹也 Tetsuya Ishida，JODI，李昢 Lee Bul，三上晴子 Seiko Mikami，中藤毅彦 Takehiko Nakafuji，大竹伸朗 Shinro Ohtake，Yuri Pattison，Sondra Perry，Seth Price，Jon Rafman，佃弘樹 Hiroki Tsukuda，Nurrachmat Widyasena，Zheng Mahler

策展人
Lauren Cornell，陳樂明 Dawn Chan，譚雪 Xue Tan，Tobias Berger 以及助理策展人 Jeppe Ugelvig

2019年10月5日 – 2020年1月4日

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