arts & culture

continue to scroll by like advertisements: “Whoever has a sick brain from social media addiction, pulverize this plant and expel corporate confusion.” The space has the feel of a pop-up marketing booth at an expo, or a twisted Disneyland. It is very clean here.

The high schoolers are filtering out; school must be over. I am left alone with the uncanny flowers and the text, now on this screen reading: “Transform freeports into free plots.” I am experiencing a strange excitement. It’s as if one of those great clubs from a film—the kind that are always more perfect than anything real life could ever muster—has presented itself to me, has appeared in this place, inside an art museum. The exhibit is only two rooms but I am transported. The outside world does not exist and I am standing in a cybernetic city, the hostile architecture and mercurial landscaping has me surrounded. It seems to be raining. An escape room, the tunnel before a roller coaster. Soothing disembodied voices call out in unrecognized languages. “It is a statistical fact that all humans will die. Entering the future is a massive health hazard,” says the presentation from the other room. The reverse image is projected on the opposite wall. The room makes me think of a place in which to take pictures for social media, then immediately makes me feel guilty for even considering the notion.

The artist’s statement describes a science fiction world of the near future, where plants have been evolved by “a neural network, a method of AI that trains computers to process data in ways similar to the ways neurons work in the human brain.” AI is used for good rather than in malicious ways, in a vision the artist, Hito Steyerl, calls “a vision of nature that is more optimistic than the present really allows.” There is a story, though it is one that is told in images and snatches of vague phrases rather than a coherent whole. The artist’s statement will tell you all about it, but if you are now convinced to see the exhibit for yourself, I recommend not reading it until after you have already gone on the ride. Part of the fun of a rollercoaster is not knowing what comes next.

This is the Future runs through June Eighteenth at the Portland Art Museum.