Liam Young: Planetary Redesign is the first major Australian solo exhibition of filmmaker and speculative architect Liam Young. Through an immersive display of moving image works, costumes and photography, Young proposes thought-provoking redesigns of our planet that offer a radically optimistic solution to the climate crisis.
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On display in Melbourne direct from its world-premiere at the 2023 Venice Biennale of Architecture, The Great Endeavor, 2023, depicts the construction of a global system of greenhouse gas extraction and storage, powered by vast renewable energy infrastructures – together capable of removing huge quantities of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. To achieve this, Young imagines a mobilisation of workers and resources on a planetary scale, enabled by international cooperation like never before.
Also on display is Young’s film Planet City, 2020, which provides a window into an alternative urban future. Commissioned for the NGV Triennial in 2020 and supported by the Bagôt Gjergja Foundation, it depicts the design of a new city for the whole human population of the earth. It questions whether the accelerating impacts of climate change could urge everyone to retreat together into one hyper-dense sustainable metropolis, providing space for the rest of the planet to recover as wilderness.
The exhibition speculates that addressing the climate emergency is no longer a technological problem – it is now a social, cultural, and political one. It offers hope that through creativity and collective action we can move together towards ecological balance on earth.
