The Horror Show! and SAFE

Last week, the Good Futures team went on a field trip! Scroll down to read our thoughts on The Horror Show! and SAFE at Somerset House.

The Horror Show!

A taxidermy cat holding up a sign saying “I am dead”, sparkly Leigh Bowery outfits, flyers for the Rocky Horror Picture Show, a room showing snippets of the BBC’s ‘Ghostwatch’ broadcast. What do all of these things have in common? They’re on display right now at Somerset House, as part of their exhibition ‘The Horror Show!’.

The elevator pitch for the exhibition is essentially that British history is full of artists and creators using ideas they draw from horror to disrupt the status quo. Think counterculture in all forms, Blitz kids, goths and punks, the macabre and the eldritch. It’s broken up into ‘Monster’ (70/80s political unrest and the rise of punk), ‘Ghost’ (90/00s haunted landscape and birth of the internet), and ‘Witch’ (post-financial crash).

Last week, we wrote about how horror is taking the cultural zeitgeist by storm. This week’s exhibition is a prime example of how counterculture always draws on the grotesque and subversive as a form of dissent. Horror isn’t just reflected in box office numbers, it transcends every part of our cultural awareness.

The curating of the exhibition isn’t always obvious, and it’s clear it was put together by artists. This is not an exhibition that labours over its academic and philosophical merit, but one that invites visitors to think creatively. It is an exhibition with a wonderful collection of bizarre items that get you thinking and get under your skin. If walking past an overly exaggerated Maggie Thatcher puppet (certainly horrifying), straight into a room evoking The Factory full of glitzy club footage from the 1970s sounds like your thing, then this is the place for you.

SAFE

Just a few doors down in Somerset House we found SAFE, an exhibition exploring a safer world. The exhibition gives a sneak peek at ten projects to tackle some of the biggest safety challenges in the world right now. The result is a sneak peek into what a safer future could look like across the world.

Mostly, the exhibitions look at risks associated with technology, environmental responsibility and ongoing projects that are making a real difference in changing the future. At the heart of the exhibition is something that resonates with everyone who works in the third sector: a drive to make social impact and a deep care for human life. With climate change exacerbating inequality, avoidable deaths and injuries, bad working conditions and more, it’s the thread that runs through all of the projects.

Some of the projects are interesting because of the speculative future they consider, and the questions they ask. Take the AAIP project, a short film that looks into the media-driven fears about developing technology and the future of the workplace. Per the exhibition, the project aims to show a “vision of the future in which robot-human relationships are built on mutual trust and care.” Is mutual trust possible? What would trust from a robot look like? Are fears of automation really only media driven? In the UK, where it’s almost like humans are taking the robot’s jobs, will we ever get to a point where this is relevant?

Other projects are interesting because of the work they’re doing right now. The fishSAFE 2025 campaign tries to raise awareness about the overlooked death toll of the global fishing trade, and push for the distribution of essential resources (lifejackets, communication devices etc). The Resilience Shift, which looks at Mexico City as an example, considers how cities can improve access to safe and clean water.

Although it’s now closed at Somerset House, the exhibition has moved to Lloyd’s Register Foundation for those interested. Highly recommended food for thought for anyone who works in the third sector.