CITY

City combines the influences of Japanese anime Akira, hard-edged urban fashion design, and Stephen Hawkings futuristic worldview, charting a dark path through the contemporary urban environment.

Rendered in the cool grey palette of the season, the painted text in CITY echoes the bleak monotony of the post-industrial landscape. Whereas historically it was believed possible to observe a city objectively from outside of its walls, this ubiquitous urban environment is suffocating in its harmonious hierarchy. CITY's synthesized narrator can no longer imagine a position outside of the city from which it can be viewed in its entirety, and dreams instead of its violent apocalyptic destruction. The disembodied digital voice wistfully imagines a nostalgic future where we are "free to choose for ourselves," inhabited by a humanity of pure energy and unbridled power. In Akira this vision is realised as an idyllic silent void, a techno-womb where we drift endlessly amidst the superfluous rubble of the city.