Uma Breakdown:​ Earth A.D.

About

This new body of work draws on the artist’s research into the structures and historical context of Gothic narratives, and their creative relationships to time, space, identity and social relations.

The project consists of video games, objects, and an installation. An immersive installation in the gallery made from muslin, concrete rebar, bioresin and lino prints presents coffin-like structures, a hanging coracle alongside a holographic projection and new drawings from the artist. The immersive Earth A.D. game will be playable online on WysingBroadcasts.Art, while a lo-fi "demake" game is playable in the gallery.

Commissioned in partnership with FACT, Liverpool and QUAD, Derby, Earth A.D. will launch as an installation in Wysing’s gallery in September and a game on WysingBroadcasts.Art later in the autumn, before evolving and touring to FACT in Summer 2023 and QUAD in Summer 2024.

Earth A.D. explores the Gothic genre’s relation to deep time, real and imagined versions of England, industrial capitalism, guilt, shame, queerness, and the Gothic’s entangled relationships with the evolution of science fiction, horror and the computer.

That’s one description. Another is that it’s a science fiction story about trans* solidarity and care across time and space, which is repeatedly told, distorted, translated, lost, and reinvented.

Yet another is that it's a room full of coffin technology and holograms, and a video game about the dreams of a sleeping cyborg girl.