Alien Nation

“The storylines of 1950s and 1960s science-fiction films were restricted, for the most part, to a small number of narratives that were played out over and over again in stories that rehearse the dangers of infiltration and attack by alien invaders. Scenarios often involve the ‘invisible’ duplication and transformation of friends, family and associates into emotionless aliens (Invasion of the Body Snatchers; It Came from Outer Space); the breeding of life-threatening alien-life forms that threaten to overwhelm and wipe out human life (Invasion of the Body Snatchers; The Thing; Day of the Triffids); the fear of annihilation (The Day the Earth Stood Still; The War of the Worlds; Forbidden Planet); the threat of brainwashing and mind control (Village of the Damned; Quatermass and the Pit); and anxieties about miscegenation and racial impurity (The Day the Earth Stood Still; Village of the Damned). In the aftermath of 9/11 and the bombings in Madrid and London in 2004 and 2005, these narratives have been replayed once again, this time in both documentary and fictional media representations, emerging from a society which has displaced its fears and paranoias onto the figure of the migrant, the asylum seeker and the Islamic other. Images of the asylum seeker who poses a criminal threat to the wider society, or the terrorist whose outward appearance does not betray his/her loyalties to an ‘alien’ ideological cause; the brainwashing and radicalization of young men, converting them to militant Islam; and the fear of attack from long-range chemical weapons or terrorist devices closer to home, have become the subject of our collective nightmares, frequently stoked and fired up by politicians and the media so that it becomes almost impossible to distinguish reality from nightmare.”

From ‘We are the Martians’, co-written with John Gill in John Gill, Jens Hoffmann and Gilane Tawadros (eds), Alien Nation, London: ICA and Iniva, and Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2006. The publication, which also includes contributions from Greg Tate, David Alan Mellor, Cylena Simonds and Clare Fitzsimmons, accompanied the exhibition of the same name. Initially conceived by Gilane Tawadros when she was Director of Iniva, the project was further developed in collaboration with curators Gill and Hoffmann. The exhibition opened at the ICA in London in November 2006 (17 November 2006–14 January 2007) and subsequently toured to Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester (17 March–7 May 2017), and the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich (2 October–9 December 2017). 

Participating artists were: Laylah Ali, Hamad Butt, Edgar Cleijne, Ellen Gallagher, David Huffman, Hew Locke, Henna Nadeem, Kori Newkirk, Marepe, Yinka Shonibare, Eric Wesley and Mario Ybarra Jr.