Previsualising a Quiet Earth

This was an illustrated talk at London Conference in Critical Thought (LCCT).

Images used to promote new buildings and developments show squares, malls and parks with sparse scatterings of people. Car adverts show drivers navigating empty roads and cities. The 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics opening ceremony shows futuristic but depopulated landscapes of South Korea. Our cultures are also saturated with images of post-apocalyptic scenes from which humans have also largely disappeared (‘The Quiet Earth’ being an older example of the genre, from 1985, with TV show ‘The Last of Us’, 2023, being a more recent one). What does this coincidence in imageries mean?

In London – a city frequently used as a filming location – we are often outside the action of the story; watching images-in-progress which we may or may not be able to track down within a future screen release. Where are we supposed to be, in a privatised city lacking public space? Is this an accelerated, post-Covid impulse pushing into our homes; into misanthropy?  
This presentation will use images and video clips to make connections and comparisons and ask what these tropes might add up to.