AAA - An Age of Abstractification

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Climate change, globalisation, mass migration, secularism, digitisation, longevity. What is it that defines the direction of these profoundly influential phenomena shaping humanity throughout the 20th and 21st century?  They are all subject to a process of ‘abstractification’ -  tectonic shifts from a more material, physical state of greater certainty and definition to one which is far more abstract, intangible or transcendent. Moreover, this has been taking place at breakneck speed over a period of only three generations or from grandparents to grandchildren. Some of these changes have been overwhelmingly positive, creating greater equality and individual freedoms for the disempowered. Others, however, spell disaster for the future of our planet and its finite resources.  The tension and backlash against this tide is in full flow in the form of dramatic surges in right-wing authoritarian populism, border closures, sectarianism and other inward-facing movements bedfellowed in their desire to reverse the process and return to a time of greater control.

Rather than grasp this process through the lens of academics and analysts it is told through an artist’s eye view likening it to the nature, movement and identity found in physical material, matter and objects.