Fi-Sci 

The Fiction Of Science Fiction

Org. Pontogor e Joaquim pedro

The Fiction of Science Fiction

“Dec. 11th, 17XX.
You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.”

In 1956, an unimaginable project set in motion the construction of a fictional, futuristic utopian city on the Central Plateau of one of the world’s largest nations as part of an unprecedented scientific and social experiment. There, the future rushed ahead of itself, exacerbating what the past had long been showing (all along?). The region’s population was cleaved by a single, clean, precise cut, as if struck by Alexander the Great’s unsheathed sword. On one side were all those who toiled for a pittance and died so buildings could spring from barren ground like flowers in a desert, only to be banished afterward to the satellite towns orbiting this model city. On the other were those who converged from every corner of the globe in vehicles blessed by modernity. The project failed, but it still drifts through the dreams of those merely pretending to sleep.

A few years after the “birth” mentioned above, farther south, under the Sun of May, primary schools would be barred from teaching a “simple” diagram apparently because it made the concept of cooperation easier to grasp.

In assemblies involving multiple votes or approvals (Proposal A and Proposal B), the inclusion-exclusion principle’s formula is used to prevent the same votes from being counted twice:

N(Total)=N(A)+N(B)−N(A∩B)+N(Abstentions)

But tyrants think some things should never even be imagined.

Fiction and reality draw closer or move apart depending on point of view, context, and pacts forged among the members of a community (∩)—or, more often, depending on the norms imposed by the few who rule the many.

Ever since the opening lines (“December 11, 17XX...”) were published anonymously by Mary Shelley on January 1, 1818, scientists have imagined and devised previously unthinkable worlds: electric machines, calculating machines, radios, bombs. Artists have fueled the collective imagination with interplanetary voyages, extraterrestrial beings, telepathic communication, automatons, bombs. Everyone else read about this inescapable New World and made use of its devices and tools: cell phones, virtual assistants, video calls.

Bombs kept falling on their heads.

The space where these two worlds (science ∩ art) intersect, often called sci-fi, feeds on both and feeds both in return. Artists draw on technology and Dream of Electric Sheep; scientists glimpse “impossible” futures first imagined by artists and feel compelled to make them real. Or more than real. Trillionaire technocrats do not dream; yet, through invisible cables and circuits, they feed on bodies and minds, manipulate everything, and claim the power to define what is—or is not—fiction.

(Do I need to talk about the bombs?)

The exhibition The Fiction of Science Fiction, presented by the moraes-barbosa collection and conceived and organized by Joaquim Pedro and Pontogor, builds a fictional narrative made up of artworks, documents, and detours. Not everything included in the show was intended as science fiction. However, once placed side by side—in dialogue or in a mirroring relationship—and articulated through the title weaving them together, these pieces may be read as fragments of a single fiction, or even as a kind of short circuit.

In a reality shot through with robot dogs, space tourism, mind-control technologies, and drone-bombarded skies, the future once dreamed of—and now lived—feels more like an iReal nightmare, unreal in every sense.

“Wake up, dear Alice!” her sister said. “Goodness, what a deep sleep you've been in!”

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