Josh Kline: Project for a New American Century

The short film Adaptation (2019–22) imagines a future Manhattan transformed by ruinous climate change and follows a team of relief workers at the end of their shift. Described by the artist as a “science fiction of ordinary life,” the film focuses on what tomorrow could be like for the working people who will clean up the inevitable mess resulting from the political and economic decisions of previous generations. Like the real workers interviewed in Blue Collars, the fictional workers of Adaptation survive by doing the kind of essential but poorly compensated, physically taxing jobs that society takes for granted. 

Using primarily analogue special effects—scale models, miniatures, matte shots—and 16mm color film instead of high-definition digital video, Kline creates an expressionistic science fiction that suggests a nostalgia for the present from the perspective of a future transformed by global warming. Although it was filmed in 2019, the work was completed during the pandemic and its poetic voiceover and melancholy soundtrack, both added in 2020, quietly evoke the lockdown and quarantine in New York.