This exhibit, which focuses on the development of urban planning as futuristic-fantasy aptly opens with New York’s Coney Island and the famous World Fair held in Paris 100 years after the storming of the Bastille. A wall mural of the many multicultural pavilions depicts the hope in globalization held by those attending the Exposition Universelle of 1889. The main sentiment of the initial three dreamlands (Coney Island and the Paris and New York World Fairs) is that of openness and curiosity. Leaving the first stage of the exhibit, one tinted with hope and whimsy and featuring the likes of Dali and Eiffel, visitors enter a portrayal of Las Vegas in the 60s and 70s. Although still a portrayal of fantasy, with unlikely large signs, photos of the Vegas Eiffel Tower, and Vegas Vienne this later phase of the exhibit is notably marked with tinges of greed, capitalism and a uneasy surrealism. Wandering further visitors see a bizarre exhibit of dancing (exercising?) skyscrapers moving to a workout soundtrack remixed into a commentary on the problem of terrorism. This exhibit, representing perhaps a simplified view of New York of today, plays loudly next to a drowned out screening of the final dancing and singing number from the film 42nd Street (1933) a much more idyllic view of the city.

Wandering further into the exhibit visitors see blueprint’s of Disney’s Epcot the environmentally sound is not somewhat creepily homogenous city that never was in Florida. Here stop to see the video explaining the system of people movers and monorails with carefully divided places for commerce, parks, and schools which intended to make problems or traffic and pollution a thing of the past. Wander further still to see photos of today’s dreamlands, Dubai and Shanghai, which in contrast to the whimsy and art of part one of the exhibit reek of capitalist greed injected with steroids.  A few months before his death in 2008 J. G. Ballard, an observer of contemporary urban change famously said ‘I am of a generation for whom the big city meant a centre of cultural influence (London, Paris, New York) or economic power (London, New York); now it has become a theme park (Las Vegas, Dubai), a vast camp (the cities of China) or an architectural aberration and utter social hotchpotch (Tokyo)’. The exhibition Dreamlands at Pompidou seems to go a step further and through stark contrast between stages seems to suggest the dreamlands of today are no longer about curiosity in one another’s culture and in what is possible architecturally but more about creating a fake reality (Epcot and Dubai’s World and Palm Islands) based more on greed and profitability then curiosity. Exhibit open unti August 9th, tell me what you think and if your not in Paris you can at least judge the trailer