2021
Digital print on paper mounted on board
Dimensions variable
In July 1997, Wired magazine published “The Long Boom: A History of the Future, 1980–2020”, an essay by the American futurists Peter Schwartz and Peter Leyden that projects a “radically optimistic” scenario of sustained economic growth and increased global integration from the 1980s through to 2020. The piece was, coincidentally, published at virtually the same time that the Thai baht was unpegged from the US dollar, destabilising financial markets in East Asia and marking the start of the Asian financial crisis. “The Long Boom” was thus immediately attacked for its unwarranted hopefulness, especially regarding its arguments of an ascendant Asia. The quick recovery of the region after the crisis seemed, for a moment, to vindicate the authors, only for the world to confront further economic malaise and social upheaval in the following decade that began in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis and ended with a devastating global pandemic.
In the print installation The Long Boom, the original Wired essay is reproduced as a floor installation, which displays the text across a set of long scrolls, lending a physical presence to the unrealised future of the long boom while literally bringing Schwartz and Leyden’s lofty visions back down to the ground.