Specters of Potential Energy at Beijing Art and Technology Biennale

The 2nd Beijing Art and Technology Biennale – Earthwise includes a collaborative installation, including contributions by Critical Media Lab researchers Johannes Bruder, Solveig Qu Suess, and Tekla Aslanishvili.

The installation Specters of Potential Energy centers documentary film as a method and a crucial terrain for recording, accounting and imaging the manifold and global operations that legitimate and bring into being hydropower and its subsequent infrastructures. Re-activating archives and memories of earlier, colonial infrastructure and nation-building projects, the films and texts in this exhibition link the present to a haunting past that raises spectres of potential energy, altering “the experience of being in time, the way we separate the past, present and future” (Avery Gordon in Ghostly Matters).

Specters of Potential Energy assembles three films by Solveig Qu Suess, Tekla Aslanishvili, and Ifor Duncan, and features text contributions by Johannes Bruder, Evelina Gambino & Ishita Sharma, Aleksandra Aroshvili, and Ifor Duncan. The installation was designed by PianPian He and Xiyun Dai, the sound design in the exhibition appears courtesy of A Walking Contradiction.