'Future Fictions', a Group Show at Assembly Point, London

I had waded through desert landscapes, climbed mountains, faded into lakes, traversing overgrown fields offering nothing but an endless horizon. I detoured via desolate interiors of emptied skyscrapers, hollow shopping malls, former car parks. Harvesting weeds from abandoned gardens and washing myself with water accumulated in ponds resting like uninhabited portals outside of former mega-cities. Presence echoed in absence, just in accordance with the automated cycles. With my mind in bondage by the occurrence of the present tense, I attempted versions, sculpting fan fictions of alternative Earth histories. In order to retain the future I had to approach the past, bisecting the smell of a sacrificed era. Seasons returned in patterned sequence. Summer emerging like a dinosaur baby cracking open from its egg. Sun morphing to grey as swarms moved from the southern hemisphere. After all I had witnessed I now omitted my question marks with a simple swipe, an auto-generated cognitive response. In these moments, I depicted myself as a buddha sunbathing in the midst of a volcano. It elevated me and I observed the different layers at stake. Meditating from a bird’s perspective I could perceive some of the levels still being a promise of regrowth, of rituals and lyrics being performed in silence. I studied the work of grid engineers as I tried to keep myself aligned. Derailed only momentarily, as a concept of speeding up the fiction. Some of the spongy zones offered a perfect exploration of genetic insurgencies, perennial bacteria, and a plethora of mind-morphing drugs. A constant sensation of there being more than the mere things that were taking place. With a thousand networked braids resting along my spine, I could feel the wind approaching hours ahead, allowing me to seek shelter from the angels’ harps. Tickling my perception, always close to slipping. I held it together even when the algorithms were feeding off my brain. I let them wiggle through my maze. The magnetic fields seeping through me, sound my cells, ask for resonance, I became its instrument. I uncomfortably embodied the mythos of the lonesome traveler, a contemporary Ovid in neoprene on the run from an elision of language. By Matilda Tjader