Some Sort of Alien Nature

A JOINT PROJECT with YIJUN XIONG

We live in an artificial reality, one of human design, over design. Where ecology is dissected and reformed, in the likeness of humans.

Black boxes; the entanglement of human networks; surmounting delirium lost within “Ecological Colonisation”. A qualified world of materiality - the human creation, some sort of alien nature.

HAVE YOU EVER QUESTIONED HUMANS' CONTROL OVER NATURE?

OF WHAT WE ASSUME WE ARE CAPABLE OF?

We live in an artificial reality where ecology is dissected and reformed, in the likeness of humans - repurposed for humans. We find ourselves in a world of human design. Design and over-design.

The urban landscape - romanticised.

Cities firstly of bricks

then plaster

then marble ––

Of marble - of monument

Its body dressed

In painted walls,

Lacquered doors,

Cobbled streets,

The pinnacle of a new civilization

Floating above the natural world.

A fabricated civilisation, the waking dream.

Where time rules over, a measurement of labour, of value.

dESIGN AND OVER DESIGN

Techno natures are designed in the likeness of humanity’s goals of civilisation through the reappropriation of natural beings and organic spaces. Moulding the natural world to meet humans’ material needs, the mass generation of resources to advance their social evolution, civilization.

In the changing of the tides as the moon began to rise,

As the water creeps from the ground —

The fevered dream of twin cities, reflected in its own demise.

Materials of unnatural permanence

Clogged pores under glaze

Impervious to its surroundings

Fabricated for Fabrication

each step further away from its nature

Independent monuments -

enslaved all the same.

>>ENTER CAPITAL CITY<<

Built atop this world; the refusal to accept the natural state as an inevitability. Cities built from the abstract images of the anthropocentric mind; borne out of the minds of men and plagues this world with the beliefs of its overriding humanity.

Ecology becomes artifice,

Tendrils flowing through iron cages

Roots gasping under engulfing ground

Their bodies stagnant, sterile,

Life support,

Its mechanical veins constructed above

Tabula rasa —

The geology of a blank slate

A wasteland.

There is impurity within the artificial and the natural, a dialogical narrative of cross-contamination.

“Contamination”

The term, spoken like a plague

Mutating,

Artificial Lifeforms,

Artificial Life.

Pollution,

Filtration,

Desperate

Sanitization,

Disinfection.

Preserving

Some form of Alien Nature.

The essence of this ruthless pursuit. Working frantically, feverishly towards an exponential quest, to make things more human, more accommodating, more convenient, more comfortable.

Stop.

Stop and think.

Have you ever questioned humans’ control over nature?

Do you ever notice the inconsistencies within our ideals; of what we assume we are capable of?

The power to organize, to turn the natural world into one that is man-made.

//the urban environment.

Do you ever notice the inconsistencies within our ideals? The security in the artificial.

//Are we artificial?

Black boxes; the entanglement of human networks; beyond the individual’s surmounting delirium lost within this “Ecological Colonisation”.

Ecology – the relation between organisms and the natural world.

Colonization - humans’ instigated, organized control over the natural world. Replacing the Earth’s alterity with a techno nature moulded to human needs.

A qualified world of materials and materiality - the human creation of some form, of alien nature.