Output details

Eduardo Paolozzi at New Worlds: Science Fiction and Art in the Sixties

In the late 1960s progressive art and science fiction seemed to converge around attitudes towards the new cyber technologies. Can a magazine help to discern these attitudes and map the interactions?

New Worlds magazine (1967-70) and the "science fiction" art of Eduardo Paolozzi, and other first generation British Pop artists, function as case histories. Primary material was consulted at the Tate Gallery, Scottish National Galleries of Modern Art and the Paolozzi Foundation including graphics and sculpture, manuscripts and contemporary magazines. Interviews were also conducted. Research focuses on "new wave" science fiction (Michael Moorcock, Brian Aldiss, et al), the significance of science fiction within the Independent Group (1952-55) and the representation of information technology (Jameson, Post Modernism). Ideas were tested at two conferences, "Science Fiction and Surrealism" (2010) and "Re-Reading Paolozzi," MMU (2011).

A visual-culture context was built around the notion of a 'new sensibility' (Sontag, McLuhan) aiming to reveal the way that new technological formations/consumerism informs both new wave writing and art by Paolozzi, Richard Hamilton and others published in New Worlds. The project introduces to the field little known "visual new wave science fiction" from the pages of New Worlds and samples of unpublished futuristic prose by Paolozzi. Research argues for a reappraisal of the new wave legacy based on evidence of a shared collage/vernacular aesthetic with British Pop, and a reappraisal of British Pop as a form of science fiction within an expanded post-war context. The publication features newly commissioned art work by Pamela Zoline, a key figure at New Worlds.

The research context encompasses text-image, post-war British Surrealism (Baxter, J.G. Ballard's Surrealist Imagination, 2009), the new wave legacy (Greenland, The Entropy Exhibition, 1983), art and 60s technology (Space Age Aesthetics, 2009; Bukatman, Terminal Identity, 1993) and the "turn to language" in 60s art (Kotz L, 2010).