The Failure of the Future

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Johny Pitts examines failed utopias to decipher if they can help us reimagine the future.

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The Failure of the Future: Mirai No Haikyo

Mirai No Haikyo

BBC Radio 4 - The Failure of the Future, Mirai No Haikyo

Johny Pitts looks back at visions of utopias that failed to see if we can build a brighter future from past projections. In this episode, futuristic visions for the arts.

For decades, artists and scientists have dreamed up utopias that aim to reform the way we live. But why did they not become the future we are living in today? Is there something in those “what-might-have-beens” that’s worth returning to?

Writer and artist Johny Pitts explores a series of failed visions of the future. But rather than discarding them with the sands of time, he asks what we can learn from those past projections. And might elements of these forgotten worlds propel us towards a brighter tomorrow?

For Johny, there was a time when he felt he was living inside the future. Between 1950 and 1990, Japan was a time of great prosperity, innovation and invention. The nation seemed to be mapping out an advanced reality that could shape the future that the rest of the world might live in. And yet, that didn't come to fruition.

In this third episode, Johny zooms in on how Japanese artists had begun to carve out alternative visions of the future after living through a period of tumultuous change. Creators in post-war Japan had their hopes of utopias destroyed after witnessing the meteoric rise of the bubble era and the subsequent economic crash. They summed up what was left as "mirai no haikyo" meaning "ruins of the future". In response, Japanese artists were motivated to steer society towards new ideas for what the future could be. Might their imaginations of how to overcome times of hardship be useful to us today?

Presenter: Johny Pitts
Producer and sound design: Anishka Sharma
Mix Engineer: Andy Fell
Executive Producer: Phil Smith

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