DAVID LAWREY & JAKI MIDDLETON

The choice is yours (2011), kinetic sculpture.

 

The choice is yours is a sculptural work that employs the physical format of a traditional museum diorama. However instead of displaying visions of the cultural or natural past, the installation sculpturally depicts two very different versions of an imagined urban future, each influenced by the dystopic and apocalyptic fantasies and predictions in science fiction narratives, disaster movies and climate change forecasts.

In the popular imagination, the city of Los Angeles is a focal point for urban destruction. L.A., through decades of disaster films has endured repeated devastation more than any other city in the world. The specific site in L.A. embodied in our work, The choice is yours fell victim to nuclear disaster and volcanic eruption in the films Miracle Mile (1988) and Volcano (1997) respectively. L.A.’s ‘Miracle Mile’ was once a distinctive boulevard, credited with creating a new model for rapid urban and sub-urban expansion worldwide over the last century, but nowadays only remnants of this history remain visible. As a district that has experienced extreme change, both real and fictional, The choice is yours adds another layer in the complex network of narratives that have developed on this site.