Imminent annihilation plausibly threatening modern life as we all know it, isn’t often a topic for standard genres like musical theater — at the least it hasn’t been because the Cold War. Yet, when going through the potential of local weather change disaster, A.I. apocalypse and nuclear incineration, what’s extra relatable than multidimensional permacrisis?
At the List Visual Arts Center, a museum for modern artwork throughout the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, the multimedia and web tradition artist Lex Brown clocks the psychic tenor of ambient each day doom along with her newest exhibition, “Carnelian.” As a 60-minute musical video unspools on 4 billboard-size screens within the darkened area of one of many museum’s salons, the present rides the emotional curler coaster of life underneath fixed risk of demise, ruminating on the fraying of society’s collective nerves — by means of tune.
A sci-fi story advised in a prologue and three acts, “Carnelian” follows three characters in a bunker — Orachrysops (Najee Duwon), Necyria (Ciani Barclay) and Bicyclus (Mya Drew Flood) — contending with a force they refer to only as “the Boom.” The ambiguity around the Boom drives the characters’ anxiety, and the work. By abstracting the terror they face, Brown makes viewers her monster’s collaborators, forcing us to shade in her blanks with our own nightmares.
Initially, I read “Carnelian” to be about the anxiety stemming from the rapid advances in artificial intelligence, and the scrum of articles about whether the technology might pose an existential threat to humanity.
Ultimately, though, “Carnelian” settled in as being less about any particular threat, and more about feeling lost amid the deluge of emergency overload. The song “Boom” has something to rile up everyone: “nothing’s as sacred and reviled as the womb,” “plastic passes for food,” “the market crashes” — there’s even a mention of the writers’ strike in Hollywood. Are these end times vibes unique to today or, as Necyria sings, “just the latest in how many centuries of turmoil that we’ve had?” All three chime in: “But over the horizon something is new. I know I heard it go boom.”
The linguistic dexterity of “Carnelian” is a hallmark of Brown’s work. (She has also written the erotic sci-fi novel “My Wet Hot Drone Summer.”) Her wordplay here lands even more incisively given the show’s location at M.I.T., where it’s hard to avoid thinking about the role of elite universities in grooming minds to engineer existentially consequential technologies in the name of perpetual advancement.
Her lyrics and the catchy singalong music (written with Samuel Beebe) help subvert the fear permeating the project, lending a surprising approachability to a looming apocalypse. “Carnelian” uses this catchiness to address society’s impulse to self-soothe through cheap hits of social media. “Maybe scroll? Try scrolling!” Orachrysops shouts, desperate to listen to “The Script,” a fictional each day podcast produced by the fictional Omnesia Radio.
Brown herself makes an audio cameo, because the conspiracy-minded host of “The Script.” “Governments are predicting a catastrophic loss,” she chirps. “What else can we expect? Military exercises and natural events that may be caustic.”
As if that weren’t sufficient, she provides, “And what nobody wants you to know?: It’s about the horse tranquilizer!”
This fictional pop-authoritarian podcast and guardian firm name again to the company villain in Brown’s earlier video works like “The Glass Eye” and “Communication,” through which the artist stars as a number of characters resisting Omnesia’s digital clutches. And by opening “Carnelian” with an public sale of a field branded with the movie’s title (earlier than plunging us into her characters’ parallel universe by means of that portal), Brown as soon as once more explores how the digital advert business shapes our perceptions of actuality by means of algorithmically customized feeds designed to maintain us scrolling.
Combating threats like local weather change, nuclear conflict and A.I. unraveling civilization requires international cooperation, Brown argues; market dynamics received’t stop the worst from occurring. Fortunately, the looping narrative construction of “Carnelian” gives limitless probabilities. Over and over, Brown’s protagonists awaken to the shock of what they imagine can be their final day. Implicitly, she asks, will this be the time they collectively face these challenges with empathy? And by extension, when will we?
Lex Brown: Carnelian
Through July 16, MIT List Visual Arts Center, 20 Ames Street, Building E15, Cambridge, Mass.; listart.mit.edu/; 617-253-4680
This overview is supported by Critical Minded, an initiative to put money into the work of cultural critics from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds.
Source: www.nytimes.com