Climbing up the concrete mountain that is the Southbank Centre and into Extinction Beckons, I, Impostor, immediately functions as a ceremonious salutation. Offering up an insipidly eerie red carpet moment for former RSA student to coax us into the glitchy territories of composed liminality. Re-constructed here at the Hayward Gallery, Mike Nelson has created an alternative algorithm for his artificial scenarios to exist again. Presented together here for the first time since their debut displays, I, Impostor, The Deliverance and The Patience, Untitled (Public Sculpture for a Redundant Space), Triple Bluff Canyon (The Woodshed), M25, The Asset Strippers (solstice) and I, Impostor (the darkroom) have been copied and pasted from Nelson’s metaphysical clipboard, aka his south London studio. At a time where art looms on omnipresent screens, seeing things IRL becomes overtly theatrical. For Nelson, composing site sculpture and reading a book are the very things that burst the curious curse of two dimensionality. I am not entirely sure what came first, a) the meme proposing that reading a book is like looking at dead trees and hallucinating or b) Nelson’s consistent references in interviews to his own analogy of sitting in an armchair and being transported by fiction. Either way, Extinction Beckons is Nelson’s answer to immersive art presented in the metamodern era.

The incandescent hum of I, Impostor’s half full half empty space, purrs through three industrial sized shelving units. Serving up a dystopian Ikea warehouse. Where all of the furniture remains in its flatpack state, fizzling out into the realms of ‘unfit for purpose’. But of course each gaudy chandelier, and unidentifiable piece of metal work, each disused door and rusted garden fence chained together with limp defiance were the components of one of Nelson’s largest installations to date. I, Impostor, was originally conceived for the British Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale back in 2011. Ours truely; Mike Nelson, twice nominated for the Turner prize, studied at The Reading School of Art from 1986 to 1990 for a BA in Fine Art before achieving an MA in sculpture at The Chelsea College of Art in 1993. And here, at the Southbank Centre we are reminded of the tendency of temporality in installation. So what is installation if what we experience within gallery walls was never and will never be a naturally occurring sight? Installation today is the mapping of annexed items in correlation to their distant and disconnected meanings. Nelson’s considered composition of lonely materials, forbidden from touch for so long, seemingly transform into a maze of sensory experience. A mise-en-scene of matter that forms this deja vu of replicated installations. Nelson’s meticulous artificial interiors and re-imaginations of his previous installations beat AI image generators at their own game. When presented in this way, each dismembered relic of old immediacy in The Deliverance and The Patience; the cigarette butts stashed away behind cumbersome landlines, peeling political posters and praise for communism amongst naff memorabilia that has not aged well act as the very fictional fibers that thread together the narrative of stagnating time in this lost space.

With each turn and after a succession of speedy recoveries from the anxiety-inducing creeks of the doors screaming for a drop of WD-40, we are met with the kind of acute attention to detail only something sentient could compose. Unlike what text-to-image software materialises, Nelson’s installations have not been fed to the internet. His regurgitation of visual information takes blood, guts and actual human touch. Nelson’s Extinction Beckons is this living, breathing, smelling, tasting, touching all seeing algorithm. His sculptural scenarios don’t just pass as sculpture. They are fully imbuing, fully formed and have the capacity to fool in the truest sense of the word. In here, each sensation creates an awareness that works in conjunction to and separate from what constitutes items in their most lively state. AI image generation is an organless organisation of visual information. Yet, it’s difficult to determine whether Nelson has somehow entered in the visual/verbal prompts necessary for AI to generate these physical spaces that make up Extinction Beckons; each room is an uncanny replication of his own installations co-existing in the spaces of the Hayward Gallery. Each individual cinematic space becomes a disjointed, rhythmic event once you escape the labyrinthine experience of The Deliverance and The Patience. Without due warning, you’re spat back out into omission. Moments before remember, liberation from this miscellany was your sole purpose. Now, the exposure to harsh lights and high ceilings makes you want to pull the plug on freedom and go back inside the wooden simulation. 

It is the surplus space of every gallery. It is also a  public place where it is illegal for the homeless to loiter. Here it is where Nelson offers some kind of uncomfortable encouragement that keeps you moving through the exhibition. In the foot of a stairwell, Untitled (Public Sculpture for a Redundant Space) is a slumbering myth of safety and warmth. The sleeping bag stuffed with rubble mimics the human body, though there is nothing bodily about it. Nor is it humane to criminalise sleep to the weary. Especially when said space doesn’t actually serve any purpose to anyone apart from those who are denied it. The cruel viscerality of this work is noted with a certain discomfort and distance. Much like how one acts when passing by a person existing in these conditions in the real world. It’s in this passing moment between installations that we realise Nelson’s palpable participation in echoing our lived experience.

Nelson’s amalgamation of assembled experiences fluctuate in the uncanny valley that is contemporary installation. We relearn sensory integration basics as we navigate the body parts of Nelson’s augmented reality here at the Hayward gallery. Sceptical familiarities are spoon fed to us in this seven course tasting menu that is Extinction Beckons. Once again, Nelson has stirred the pot of contemporary installation, leaving the bitter sweet taste of metadistopia in our mouths.