Michael Wang: "Lifeforms"

Artist Michael Wang will discuss his work at the intersection of nature and technology. He will talk about his efforts to expand the media available for art, sharing works that engage living organisms, viruses, pollutants, and radioactive materials. Many works emerge at the juncture of natural and technological systems, asking questions such as: Can a river become a machine, a species a cultural product, or a swamp a sculpture?

Wang will focus on works that address the natural origins of modern energy, complicate conversations around extinction and conservation, and explore emerging relationships between the planetary and the cosmic. He will close the talk with a reading of his Manifesto of Photosynthesism—a call for an aesthetics of the carbon negative—accompanied by a new video created in collaboration with landscape architect and digital artist Aidan Ackerman.