Joe
Pettet
Smith

The way we imagine the future has drastically changed in recent years. Ideas of infinite technological and industrial progress have been forgotten and replaced with premonitions of environmental catastrophe, civilisation collapse and nuclear war in varying combinations. Cinema articulates and dramatises cultural desires, fears and anxieties, turning to stories from real-life for its source material. In a time of increasing unease and paranoia, real-world concerns for the future merge with entertainment. We are presented with exaggerated visions of the near future that allow us to experience what it might be like to find ourselves at the end of the world as we know it. Reality feeds into the narratives of fiction and subsequently, imagery from science-fiction is used as shorthand to make sense of real-world situations. 

Stories of the collapse of civilisation are as old as civilisation itself, but their popularity within mainstream entertainment is increasing. We turn to these narratives to make sense of what is going on around us; looking towards the future to make sense of the present. By watching on-screen characters overcome traumatic events it allows audiences to emotionally process situations their future selves might encounter. With the advent of video games, live-action experiences and immersive theatre productions, the participant becomes the protagonist at the centre of their own post-apocalyptic fantasy.

In Preparations for the Worst-Case Scenario, Joe Pettet-Smith photographs sites and ephemera related to this growing phenomenon. A doomsday bunker styled escape room, a shopping mall used for zombie survival experiences, a Hollywood film set of a destroyed suburban neighbourhood, theatre productions inspired by the environmental crisis. Taking a multifaceted approach to image making that combines video game imagery and disaster film stills with large format photographs of spaces where the end of the world is simulated for entertainment, the series explores how audiences might deal with and process an uncertain future.

"Joe Pettet-Smith documents civilians participating in fake scenarios which enable them to role-play survival tactics in a fictional future. This collision of real-world anxiety and entertainment is powerful and symbolises our primal desire to survive in a time of imminent undoing." Gem Fletcher, Creative Review

"Combining a captivating aesthetic with the use of sharp, coherent narration, Joe Pettet-Smith deploys strategies and terminology adopted from cinema, TV and literature to transform common scenarios into dystopian visions." Salvatore Vitale, Source Magazine