The Possibility of Utopia
Julio Soto
(ES/US 2004, 17:45 mins)
This eighteen-minute audiovisual work dynamically combines found images of once-ideal cities such as Akademgorodok, an artificial city designed by Soviet scientists in the 1950s and Pitesti, an urban center known for auto industries in Romania. Soto questions the ideal cities of the later half of the twentieth century and at the same time envisions the future of New Jersey by examining the desire-driven cities of the past. The fantastical quality of his work is derived not only from his archeological research of history but also from his recreation of the discovered images through computer technology.