From utopias to dystopias

We tend to think of sci-fi as the most progressive of genres. But “New Eden: Science Fictions Mythologies Transformed,” an exhibit ongoing at Singapore’s ArtScience Museum, challenges such easy assumptions.

Focusing on the depiction of women in science fiction, the space opens with a collage of movie moments, concluding that the “charade of a diverse and multiracial future” in films and shows like Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell and Star Trek: The Next Generation is “as flimsy as their holograms.”

Certainly, ScarJo playing an Asian or the exoticized servants of Blade Runner or Spielberg’s A.I. are but the tip of the iceberg. Wander through dark yet futuristic spaces that examine the codes underlying familiar sci-fi tropes, and point towards new visions. “In a New Light” focuses on the female Asian of sci-fi dreams, with sleek videos such as Mariko Mori’s “Miko No Inori” (1996) reimagining the “mystical” Asian female.

Other sections focus on the “Paradox of Paradise”—how it’s been borrowed from ancient spiritual text and imagery to craft fictional utopias such as the “Shangri-La” of James Hilton’s novel Lost Horizon, which has an amusing modern counterpoint, demonstrated by Chinese-American artist Patty Chang, who wandered through China’s own “Shangri-La” (as the government renamed the city of Zhongdian in 2001) in a futuristic prism-mobile for her art piece “Mountain” (2005), with a camera crew filming the vehicle in such mundane locations of “Shangri-La” as a featureless highway and gassing up at an empty petrol station. Indeed, Paradise ain’t what it used to be.

Side spots like “The Monstrous Feminine” look at the supernatural depiction of women—particularly Asian—in early sci-fi and horror, and what it says about primal fears of the unknown. The show flips that narrative, showing these women as empowered, indeed superpowered beings in edgy pieces from Bali, or the Filipino-Aussie collective Club Ate, whose videos refashion ancient Filipino myths like the manananggal into something they call “Future Folklore.”’

Sci-fi owes much to Asian spiritual beliefs, whether it’s the Taoist principles underlying The Ways of Folding Space and Flying, a video work by Korean artists Moon Kyungwon and Jeon Joonho that ties into astral projection; or the Hindu goddess Lakshmi, reimagined as a futuristic interplanetary being with eight outstretched “pods” in The House of Natural Fiber’s commissioned work, “Galactica V.2 Dharma Garden.” A belief in co-existence with nature that undergirds sci-fi films like The Abyss and Annihilation is seen with a fresh, Asian perspective.

“New Eden” is truly mind-bending, especially for those who have fed on a steady diet of tired sci-fi codes and tropes without really examining who is positioned at the center of every story. (Hint: in Hollywood, it’s long been white male-centric). The show, running until March 3, not only allows Asian artists to retake their own futures, but focuses squarely on the women at the heart of so many sci-fi narratives.

As you exit “New Eden,” why not try a side trip to Mars? Two levels below in ArtScience Museum, step into the exhibit “Mars: The Red Mirror” (running into April 7, 2024). If sci-fi offers a possible reflection of our future-perfect selves, or our worst dystopias, Mars has long functioned as a romantic fascination, ever since early peoples gazed at the heavens and astronomers spotted the shiny red dot relatively close by in space. Perhaps the proximity of Mars has led man to imagine an alternate world that could be a new paradise (at least Elon Musk thinks so), or alternately an “angry” planet whose intelligent beings would naturally want to destroy us.

The Greeks and Romans, of course, viewed Mars as a warlike god, capable of destroying all enemies. No wonder readers lapped up H.G. Wells’ 1895 novel War of the Worlds a few millennia later, and Americans fell for a fake Orson Welles radio broadcast depicting a Martian invasion in 1936. The prank led to a national panic.

But “The Red Mirror” focuses more on how Mars feeds the human imagination. Whether it’s the ‘50s cheesecake fantasy of Mars Needs Women or the cheesy aliens of Mars Attacks!, the cold red planet with carbon dioxide for air has been a convenient focal point for our dreams and nightmares.

No wonder space travel to Mars—for real—is now gearing up among a dozen or so countries over the next 20-30 years. Everyone wants to find out whether Mars is the place to be in 2050! The exhibit devotes ample space to these real-life missions.