JOURNEY THROUGH a series of modernist buildings on your way to a construction site intended for people who will be alive thousands of years in the future, but will not understand any languages we speak today.
This is DemocraCity by Mark Clare, a new animated film which is running at the 126 Gallery, Flood Street until Saturday February 21. It is accompanied by a slide presentation of a series of temporary public sculptures the artist has produced in recent years.
DemocraCity was produced using the 3D modelling programme Google Sketchup. It begins with a timeline of iconic Modernist buildings, symbolic of utopian dreams, through a cityscape, and the industrial structures necessary to deliver the fuel that power cities. Finally, the animation arrives in a place based on artist renditions for the Onkalo waste depository site being developed at the Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant in Finland.
This facility will extend five kilometres down in to the bedrock and hold a number of chambers large enough to store large quantities of spent nuclear fuel. Onkalo is being developed to last for up to 100,000 years. Many scientists estimate we will have an ice age within the next 60,000 years and there is speculation that those alive then will not speak or read any of today’s modern languages. As a result there is an emphasis on the semantic importance of marking the depository as dangerous for future generations.
Gallery opening hours are 12 noon to 6pm, Mondays to Saturdays. See www.126.ie or www.markclare.com
