New Utopias is a lecture about pop culture utopias filmed in the style of a 1950s Walt Disney documentary. The set, costuming, lighting and camera work are based on 1950s television production standards. But where the original Disney documentaries celebrated rockets and nuclear technology, this updated version promotes aesthetic frivolity, sexual perversion and UFO abduction fantasies. Among the new utopias under analysis are an afrofuturist extraterrestrial society, a dreary French seaside town transformed into an aesthetic paradise, and a retelling of the Frankenstein myth set in a sexual utopia ruled by the uninhibited libido. This video is shown accompanied by the Mothership Blueprints.
Documentation: Video excerpt; production photo; video stills; installation at Labor, Mexico City; projection at ArtBasel Miami Beach
Terence Gower, 2010
HD Video
17 minutes
Edit: Anita Chao
Camera: Lilli Thalgott
Assistant Camera: Barbara von Woellwarth
Sound Recording: Scott Brasher / Ground Control Studio
Sound Design: Mehdi Hedayati / MH Soundpost
Titles: Lindsay Stadig
Production Stills: Barbara von Woellwarth
Digital Transfer: Creative Group, New York
Labor installation photography: Isaac Contreras
Miami photo: Jesper Just
Conversation: Pedro Reyes & Terence Gower
Related Work: Mothership Blueprints
