Press room

In May 2026, the Barbican will present the first UK solo exhibition, In Other Worlds, by artist, director and BAFTA-nominated producer Liam Young. In a time where we are made to reckon with the challenges and opportunities presented by the complexities of our modern world, Young harnesses an array of bold and wondrous films, costumes, props, movie miniature models, comics, tapestries and soundscapes to galvanise ideas about what the future could be, in a way that is radically hopeful.

Young’s practice operates in the spaces between design, fiction and futures, creating speculative worlds and visionary films which act as rehearsals for the world to come, capable of holding both our wildest aspirations and our most unsettling truths, where fiction becomes a tool for navigating the environmental urgencies we collectively face today. In this timely exhibition, visitors will be invited to immerse themselves in a series of imagined futures for our planet, rooted in real technology and climate-based possibilities. The exhibition will be a key highlight of the Barbican’s Summer season.

In Other Worlds will feature the world premiere of a newly commissioned film by Young for the Barbican, World Machine (2026). Bringing together real-life footage and CGI, World Machine reflects on the accelerating demands of large-scale AI and visualises a near future scenario in which a planetary supercomputer emerges and all of Earth’s surfaces are woven into circuits of power and calculation. In this world Young and his collaborators imagine how we might approach the production of our technologies differently. Through speculating on vast wind and solar farms powering AI data centres which might exist in cooperation with rewilded landscapes, Young invites visitors to further their understanding of the intricate balance between technological advancement and environmental stewardship. Whilst World Machine is a testament to boundless human ambition, it also signals our fragile chance to begin again and allow for both technology and nature to thrive.

Further moving image highlights will include Planet City (2021), an expansive film depicting the bringing together of the world’s population into one hyper-dense mega city, surrounded by a wild regenerating Earth; The Great Endeavour (2023), a visualisation of the design and immense scale of construction required to remove existing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which premiered at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale; and After the End (2024), a new creation story for Australia, designed and directed by Liam Young, written and narrated by Aboriginal actor and activist Natasha Wanganeen, which imagines the end of fossil fuels and reclaiming of ancestral land. Created as a 50,000-year timelapse film, the story explores the journey of the earliest First Nations communities, through colonisation and a history of resource extraction, to a hopeful sci-fi future where new energy infrastructures emerge and communities re-populate land from which they were once removed.

As visitors journey through the exhibition, fragments of a graphic novel will be displayed in each section to further transport visitors into the worlds unfolding around them. Audio character narratives and stories by leading collaborators in the fields of film, TV, science fiction and graphic novels will animate Young’s imagined cities and spaces. 

Luke Kemp, Head of Creative Programming, Barbican Immersive, says: “It is hugely exciting to be showing the first solo exhibition of Liam Young in the UK. It feels that now is the time to once again look for new stories, imagine different futures and create the worlds that we want to exist, rather than the ones that are being created for us. In Other Worlds opens up possibilities for what the future could hold, brought to life through fantastic environments and films, with unique stories and narratives from leading writers and creatives.”

Devyani Saltzman, Director for Arts & Participation at the Barbican, says: “As part of our Summer season, this exhibition continues the Barbican’s ambition to explore the most compelling and urgent issues of our times. Liam Young’s practice reminds us that envisioning alternative futures is not just speculative but essential to understanding today’s world with imagination, rigour and hope.” 

In Other Worlds is presented by Barbican Immersive, a programming strand focused on contemporary culture, emerging technology and digital creativity. After it’s London premiere, the exhibition will tour internationally.

About Liam Young

Liam Young is an artist, director, and BAFTA-nominated producer who creates imaginary worlds as a way of thinking through the futures we fear, desire, and are already making. His visionary films and speculative landscapes act as rehearsals for the world to come, spaces capable of holding both our wildest aspirations and our most unsettling truths, where fiction becomes a tool for navigating the environmental urgencies of the present. Described by the BBC as “the man designing our futures,” Young also extends this worldbuilding practice across the film, television, and video games industries, crafting stories that remind us that the future is not a distant inevitability but an act of collective imagination.

His films have premiered on platforms including Channel 4, Tribeca, the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Royal Academy, the Venice Biennale, the BBC, and The Guardian. He co-produced the documentary Consumed, nominated for Best Short Film at the 2017 BAFTAs, and wrote, designed, and directed the sci-fi film Planet City, which premiered at Tribeca in 2022 and is the subject of his TED Talk, now watched by almost 3 million viewers. His films, designs and costumes have been collected internationally by museums such as the MoMA in New York, the Smithsonian, SF MoMA, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Victoria & Albert Museum and many more.

In parallel to his work in art and entertainment he is in demand as one of the world’s leading futurists consulting on next generation technologies and design strategies for clients such as Nike, BMW, Google, Sony, Mitsubishi, Showtime, Microsoft, Ford, NASA JPL, L’Oreal, the Dubai Government, DHL and numerous others. Young’s worldbuilding practice is grounded in his academic research and he has held guest professorships at Princeton University, MIT, and Cambridge and currently runs the groundbreaking Masters in Fiction and Entertainment at SCI Arc in Los Angeles. He has published several books including Machine Landscapes: Architectures of the Post Anthropocene and Planet City, a story of a fictional city for the entire population of the earth.