There Goes Another Millennium

The year 2000 and Y2K images of the future

For my presentation There Goes Another Millennium, I trace the image and aesthetics of "the future" in popular culture against the backdrop of the Year 2000 Problem. Society and our systems were supposed to collapse in anticipation of a computer-induced apocalypse triggered by the way we counted time. The future felt increasingly pressing and present.

I share fashion from my time working in Italy in the late 1990s. Designers had already begun experimenting with tech-enabled accessories and clothing years before such things became commonplace. This talk also touches on present-day doomers and preppers, asking what drives persistent anticipation of collapse, and the strange certainty people hold about future crises.

I contrast nostalgic futures with obsolete high technology, making the case that the future exists primarily as a psychological landscape.

This presentation was part of a high desert art talk series I produced examining bleeding-edge ideas across eras.