Seven artists explore science fiction in contemporary art

A seven-artist exhibition at Tartu Art House examines the role of science fiction in contemporary art and asks whether it has become a nostalgic vision of futures that never came or remains a genre focused on what lies ahead, ERR reports. The artists say it can also help make sense of the present and phenomena people do not yet fully understand.

Artist Katrin Enni sees science fiction as a way to look at the world from a different angle. “For me, science fiction is like a kind of long eye through which you look into the distance, but you are still looking at the same things you have here,” she said on Klassikaraadio’s programme “Delta.”

Enni said science fiction can challenge existing visions of the future and offer alternatives. For the exhibition, she created an imagined space centred on a device designed to make contact with aliens. The installation resembles a small sandbox filled with silver metal objects. Visitors can dig in the box and touch the objects; moving them produces sounds that suggest the movement of aliens.

The fictional setting lets Enni use familiar artistic techniques while considering subjects that rarely come up in everyday life. She is interested in how people might contact other civilisations in space, and in what devices they send there and what signals they might receive. She noted that an alien way of communicating could be unrecognisable to humans.

Aluminium and blue light are central to the installation. Enni said her interest in metals informed the material choice, as she sees them as connected to the origins of the universe. The blue light was chosen to work with the aluminium.

Artist Holger Loodus approaches science fiction by creating an imagined society that worships different gods who offer redemption. Visitors need to engage directly with the work to take part. Loodus said he has been interested in science fiction since childhood and uses his work to explore different possible futures and presents.

In Loodus’s view, science fiction has changed in recent decades. While earlier films often featured robots and space travel, he said current stories focus more on abstract questions and phenomena already present in everyday life. “Science fiction is what we are actually experiencing now, what we cannot make sense of. We deal with entirely realistic phenomena and simply look at them from another point of view,” he said.