Zoo city, 2007. 4 min 55 sec. Multi-channel projection

 

Zoo city was inspired by the fiction of the acclaimed British author, J G Ballard, who in works such as Super Cannes and High-rise depicts the collapse of artificial city culture into an urban jungle of chaos. The work presents dystopian postmodernity, bleak cityscapes and the psychological effects of technological, social and environmental developments, especially relevant to South African violence- and crime-ridden cities. In this ‘Ballardian’ video production it is suggested that, in the end, the city as the initial outcome of utopian construct has become a dystopian nightmare of machine, artifice and the murder of the natural. The buck represents ordinary human beings vulnerable and exposed to various threats such as political, socio-economic and industrial forces.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cwcHt2Mbks