Alice Bucknell: Swamp City

About

​Expanding upon late stage capitalism’s relationship to the climate crisis, and speculating on the possibilities of ecological survival in the rapidly changing landscape of the Florida Everglades, Swamp City takes the form of a mock real estate office vending luxury eco-tourism at the proverbial end of the world.

​For the UK premiere of Swamp City, this speculative estate agency has been brought to life, temporarily transforming HOXTON 253’s gallery space into the offices of The Evergreen Group. It is complete with property listings, promotional pamphlets, 3D printed models, and slick metallic landscape prints, arranged inside a neon-tinted, houseplant-stuffed, copper-accented office space designed to lure in its millennial clientele and investors.

Set in the backroom of the gallery is an intimate architectural installation housing Swamp City (2021), a 34 minute-long film that imagines the Florida Everglades as a luxury eco-tourism retreat in a near-future reality of severe climate disruption. Visitors can relax on bean bags embellished with Swamp City’s signature camouflage print while they watch the story unfurl through the perspective of multiple narrators: The Evergreen Group, an opportunistic celebrity architect, an anthropomorphic alligator, and a 3,500-year-old Bald Cypress tree resurrected with AI.
 

About the artist
Alice Bucknell is a North American artist and writer based in London. Working primarily through video game engines, her current work explores interconnections of architecture, ecology, magic, and non-human and machine intelligence. In 2021, she organized New Mystics, a collaborative platform exploring the practices of 12 artists merging magic, mysticism, and ritual with advanced technology, featuring texts co-written with the Language AI GPT-3. 

Bucknell has exhibited her video work internationally, most recently including the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale, Bloomberg New Contemporaries, Goethe-Institut Singapore, Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam, Spoiler Space in Berlin, Epoch Gallery in LA, Ars Electronica with KÖNIG GALERIE, White Cube, Annka Kultys Gallery, and Serpentine Galleries. Her writing appears regularly in art, architecture and design publications including Flash Art, Frieze, Harvard Design Magazine, Mousse, PIN-UP and The Architectural Review. She is currently an Associate Lecturer in MA Narrative Environments, part of the Spatial Practices program at Central Saint Martins UAL, and a 2021 AI Research Resident at the Goethe-Institut. Bucknell studied Anthropology and Visual Art at the University of Chicago and Critical Practice at the Royal College of Art in London.

​The exhibition and associated programme are supported by and part of HELLO AGAIN, HACKNEY, the borough's cultural reopening initiative.