For the future bodies project i was initially inspired by an article i had read in which they talked about how due to COVID-19 people were actually stepping away from technology and regressing back to nature as a way of therapy. When we think of the future our minds always go straight to sci-fi, hyper technological environments, this way of thinking evident in films such as back to the future, blade runner etc where they’re predictions of what the 21st century looked like featured flying cars, hover-board and is just generally imagined to be way more advanced than we currently are. I found this interesting of when you juxtapose these predictions to where we actually are now, instead of advancing COVID has made us regress back to nature. Immedietaly when i read the brief for future bodies my mind started to go down the futuristic route focusing on technology but when i read this article my mind shifted towards a focus of nature. I want to look at what our future looks like now post COVID and how this has changed or affected our society.
The world has always been fast paced but in this pandemic everything has slowed down, and with nothing running it has given nature and earth a chance to breathe and regrow, repair some of the damages brought with global warming. The fashion industry is one of the biggest and fastest industries in the world, with so many collections and runways a year, it has always had a big impact on global warming but now with COVID it has given the industry a chance to stop and refocus. Many designers and fashion houses are realising that the pace of the fashion industry needs to slow down.
For this project i want to focus on this idea of eco-therapy and how post COVID world will look, a no touch or contact world where nature is fighting back and people are using nature as a way to cope with lockdown. Nature has become peoples only way of escapism, escaping the worries of modern day problems, escaping the confinements of lockdown. For my exhibition space i plan to somehow convey these thoughts and feelings and mix the ideas of the futuristic, technological world people thought we would be in to the post covid, natural world we are actually in.
