6k (5760 x 1080), color, sound
40’
Commissioned for ‘Cosmopolis #1.5: Enlarged Intelligence’ with the support of the Mao Jihong Arts Foundation
Liu Chuang’s video installation constructs a speculative journey through the history of technology, infrastructure, ecology and finance, intertwining this with anthropological knowledges and science fiction’s global imaginary. During his field trips, the artist observed that a large number of bitcoin mining sites are located inside abandoned hydroelectric plants in the rural terrains of Western China, an area also home to many minority groups. Contextualising questions of capital investment within histories of science and popular culture, the work makes lateral epistemological connections and reminds us that the deployment of cutting-edge technology is dependent on ecological and minority intelligences. Liu also explores how developments in infrastructure and capital have rendered these intelligences fragile, underlining the related destinies of the particular and the planetary. (by Cosmopolis 2#, Centre Pompidou)
