Caches From The Landscape

An exploration of the impacts of Chinese data infrastructure development on local communities and landscapes in Guizhou, through the lens of a visual travelogue.

Tags

landscape, infrastructure, collective identity

Collaborators

Ann Chen, Leon Eckert, Yutong Lin, NDOI.

Publications

Geosyllabus.

"Caches From The Landscape" is a three-channel video installation that serves as a visual travelogue, capturing the juxtaposition of past and present in a rapidly evolving landscape.

In the winter of 2019 and summer of 2021, the Nomadic Department of the Interior (NDOI) embarked on a journey to Guizhou, a province in southwestern China, to examine the profound effects of burgeoning data infrastructure on its environment and people.

Our film begins in a post-industrial village, a vestige of the Third Front Movement, and meanders through relocation villages affected by the construction of the world's largest radio telescope - Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST). It continues into the heart of China's Big Data Valley, where data centers are carved into the mountains and new tech plazas rise.

"Home"

A childhood tale in a place that is not missed, a relocation village housing families who had to make way in the name of science, and Miao folklore about home and land.

Still from Chapter 1: HomeStill from Chapter 1: Home

"Eternal Memory and Infinite Vision"

A mountain excavated to be replaced with exabytes of data, collecting the nation’s digital traces. A giant reflective dish looking outward, gathering signs of extraterrestrial life.

Still from Chapter 2: Eternal Memory and Infinite VisionStill from Chapter 2: Eternal Memory and Infinite Vision

"Expectations"

Remains of an abandoned projected future never realized. On-going construction building upon new promises at once vague and confidently precise.

Still from Chapter 3: ExpectationsStill from Chapter 3: Expectations

Exhibition

At PLATESPACE, 2023At PLATESPACE, 2023Temporal Stack, The Deep Sensor, 2021Temporal Stack, The Deep Sensor, 2021

2023, presented at PLATESPACE, Beijing, China.

2021, Temporal Stack, The Deep Sensor. Group exhibition at Research Centre of Contemporary Visual Art, Guizhou Normal University, Guizhou, China.

Publication

2021, Geosyllabus, Freeport & Geocinema.

Residency

June 1 - Aug 31, 2021, Mediated Film/VR Residency, China Residencies

February 8 - March 17, 2021, Residency at Signals & Storms Laboratory with Geocinema, Freeport Institute

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