Competition programme №3 + Q&A

In the year 2000 there was a total of fifteen fortified border walls and fences between sovereign nations. Today, physical barriers at sixty-three borders divide nations across four continents. As these walls were being constructed, millions and millions of invisible cosmic particles called muons descended into the earths atmosphere and penetrated metres deep, through layers of concrete, soil and rock. Scientists realised that these deep penetrating particles could be harvested, and a technology could be developed to use their peculiar physical capacities to pass through surfaces previously impervious to x rays. Muons allowed us to see for the first time the contraband hidden in lead lined shipping containers and secret chambers buried inside the stone walls of the pyramids. Now no wall on earth is impermeable. Today, we're all wall, and no wall at all.

As Dipesh Chakrabarty usefully reminds us, "The moment we think of the world as disenchanted . . . we set limits to the ways the past can be narrated."

Namdeo has learnt to live off the forest from his father. He stares at the treetops, searching for honey. The wind blows and afternoon descends on the small village by the jungle. Women of the village, whisper little secrets of their lost loves. Never seen, and only heard. A strange smoke emits from the ground, like a dream of a time gone by.

All a sudden, the cloud is everywhere. The descent of the cloud is as rapid and unforeseen as the sublimation. When massive among of image and data has been generated, copied and uploaded, the overloaded cloud descents to our surroundings. Video essay depicts the human's desire in producing images and data in our time, the interpenetration and co-construction of the images and social spaces, and the belief in cloud computation. The work unpacks the sociopolitical climates through navigating in the realities co-constructed by technological and sensible reals, characterized by ever-transit modern liquidity kept accelerated through digital currents.

Featuring crystallized magic markers and the kidney stone of a horse, the generously-curated mineral collection of Mary Johnson comes to life in a manual labor of love for the process of archival procedure.