Joe
Pettet
Smith

The news is filled with a constant stream of doomsday scenarios. We are reminded daily of the threats of irreversible climate change, of fighting talk between world leaders and the nuclear armament of unstable nations. In Adam Curtis’ 2016 film, HyperNormalisation he suggests that events at the end of the 20th century led to a notable shift in our shared vision of the future, these were no longer optimistic ideas of industrial progress but ones of pessimism. We are presented with a range of predictions of exaggerated fictional worlds, not unlike our own that allow us to explore what it might be like to find ourselves at the end of the world. These narratives have crept in to all aspects of popular culture; from literature to cinema, video games to theatre, live-action experiences to entire themed festivals.

The spaces depicted in Preparations for the Worst-Case Scenario are civilian training grounds constructed to offer complete and total immersion in to this fantasy. These are sites designed for an internal conflict; the activities that happen here are undoubtedly recreational but also test the participant’s readiness for any manner of situations their future selves might encounter. Aristotle’s concept of Catharsis describes how audiences seek out tragic stories to gain a kind of emotional relief from witnessing a protagonist overcome traumatic events. 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. These activities offer the participant a way to process and deal with our collective anxieties for an uncertain future.

These images of rehearsal inherently talk of something of the limits of photography; as well as being a representation of an event that has already happened we are left with the traces and the architecture of a simulation of the future. The photographs in Preparations for the Worst-Case Scenario are both evidential documents as well as allegories of anticipation. Narratives of the end of civilisation are as old as civilisation itself but its mainstream popularity is ever increasing. As a result, the borders between real-world anxieties and entertainment are collapsed and intertwined.

This project is still in development, email to request full PDF.