Finding Utopia

A general definition of Utopia being an ideal world with a perfect social, political and technological infrastructure. A world without chaos, strife or hunger. A world where the individual potential and freedom is celebrated and brought to the forefront.  In contrast to this is Dystopia which is a world that is undesirable with poverty and unequal domination by specific individuals over others. Every time I turn on the TV, read a newspaper or magazine there is some reference to global warming, climate change and the imminent changes we as humans inhabiting this planet have to face, pay attention to, and deal with somehow if we are to sustain our very existence here on Earth.  The tone in general terms is that the future is very bleak for all mankind.  This precarious future is where my concerns as an artist lie.  To follow on from the prophecy of the MA work “The Seven Seals”, to the world as it is now in a state of Dystopia.  To explore, discover and resolve a concept, a vision, the possibility of an idealized world “Utopia”.   

I am revisiting my MA work to continue by making new digital collage images.  Finding Annwn/Otherworld, or Utopia through Dystopia  by the method of Autonomism.  In looking at the Surrealist’s way of working I would also like to expand on and incorporate into this method of making my own images incorporating Andre Breton’s idea of juxtapositions as written in his 1924 manifesto, taking it from a 1918 essay by the poet Pierre Reverdy, which said:

"A juxtaposition of two more or less distant realities. The more the relationship between the two juxtaposed realities is distant and true, the stronger the image will be - the greater its emotional power and poetic reality." 

(Breton Andre (1924) Manifesto of Surrealism. Pierre Reverdy's comment was published in his journal Nord-Sud, March 1918).