Permanent IMoB Galleries
The permanent exhibition of Objects of the Misanthropocene is the result of the unerring work of the staff & trustees of the Illegal Museum of Beyond. We are indebted to their dedicated scholarship in curating a selection of the museum's exhibits for display.
The exhibits have been developed by a trans-disciplinary experimental lab in a speculative practice invited by Dean Sully, Conservator at UCL Institute of Archaeology and Scientist in Residence at the Slade School of Fine Art, 0002019-0002021 CE, Katherine Beckwith, Li Xiaozhou(Ariel), and Cecilie Gravesen, with partners from distinguished design and heritage institutions. Contributors are from UCL Slade School of Fine Art & Institute of Archaeology, the Architectural Association, Goldsmiths University Department of Design, and the Centre for Critical Heritage Studies at University of Gothenburg. A series of online exchanges during the COVID-19 lockdown contributed to the fabulation of artefacts of the Misanthropocene, fabricated to reflect objects that inhabit a selection of dystopian future worlds (described in fictional and non-fictional accounts of the Anthropocene).
Project outline:
Objects of the Misanthropocene
This exhibition insouciantly critiques the heritage world and the museum, its objects, and the stories it tells about itself - by letting scientists do creative work and artists do quasi-science. This explores a belief that, while scientific processes aim to explain how things are, creative practice has the potential to explore how things should be. Critical Speculative Design works with the tension between the real and constructed, the actual and fictional. The Illegal Museum of Beyond proposes a powerful tool for a critique of our actions by providing a certain future perspective on our uncertain present. The use of critical fabulation as a method for speculating about future worlds, generates an opportunity to create a sense of responsibility now. By imagining new stories, new interactions and new pasts, we are forced to speculate on other possible, plausible future worlds. If we get busy speculating more about everything, reality may become more malleable and preferable futures more achievable.
Please navigate the rooms of the exhibition via the floorplan below, to discover more about these future worlds, the objects that inhabit them, and how this affects our here & now. The exhibition is currently under construction, so please proceed with caution.
Entrance
Introduction & Room 1
Room 8 & Exit
Further reading:
Connolly, W, E., 2011. A World of Becoming. Durham & London: Duke University Press.
Dupuy, J-P., 2007. Rational Choice before the Apocalypse. Anthropoetics XIII, no. 3, Fall 2007/Winter 2008.
Dunne, A, and Raby, F., 2013. Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction and Social Dreaming
The MIT Press.
Holtorf, C., 2009. On the Possibility of Time Travel. Lund Archaeological Review 15 (2009), 31–41.
Mulgan, T., 2011. Ethics for a Broken World, Imagining Philosophy After Catastrophe. Acumen: Durham.
Mulgan, T., 2014. Ethics For Possible Futures. The Aristotelian Society Proceedings of The Aristotelian Society, Vol. cxiv, Part 1.
Petersson, B., Holtorf, C., (eds.)., 2017. The Archaeology of Time Travel Experiencing the Past in the 21st Century. Oxford: Archaeopress Archaeology.
Ward, Matt., and Loizeau, Jimmy,. 2020. The Illegal Town Plan: anecdotal speculation for coastal futures. Temes de Disseny 36 1-18.
Franchised IMoB Galleries
The franchised IMoB galleries are IMoB galleries that are not necessarily IMoB galleries. They are, following the Illegal visions and policies of the IMoB, claimed by the IMoB.
Anyway, we tried our best to collect some other stuff that our visitors might like as well. Whatever. If you don't like them that's fine, it's a personal taste thing and we will not be going to judge you or laugh at you or.... Anyway just enjoy.