Techno Nature
Michael Wang will present a selection of recent works that emerge out of entanglements of human and natural systems. His most recent large-scale work, 10000 li, 100 billion kilowatt-hours (2021) re-creates a fragment of the glacier at the origin of the Yangtze River. Exemplifying Wang’s use of the materials and processes under examination as artistic media, the work is made up of Yangtze water (via the Shanghai tap) and Yangtze power (via the Shanghai electric grid). The work is a piece of infrastructure that reveals the distant natural and technological phenomena that fuel Shanghai. Continuing the theme of the origins of modern energy, Wang will speak on a series of works collectively titled “The Drowned World,” which make visible the organic origins of fossil fuels, including First Forest, in which he assembled a living facsimile of a Carboniferous Period swamp within the ruins of a coal gas plant. Wang will also speak on his ongoing investigation into species categorized as extinct in nature (“Extinct in the Wild” 2014-) and the related work “Extinct in New York,” in which he cultivated species once found in the historic landscapes of New York City, but which no longer grow autonomously in any of the five boroughs.