Cosmos Cinema conversation: Alice Wang

Speaker 00s - 65.02s

The following episode is part of a series produced in conjunction with for the current Shanghai Biennale, which is entitled Cosmos Cinema and is showing at the power station of art through to the end of March. To mark the exhibition, we're conducting a series of short interviews with artists featured in the show, considering their work and its relationship to the show's overarching themes. And I'm very pleased today to welcome Alice Wang

Speaker 165.02s - 73.4s

onto the podcast. Hello, Alice. Hi, Ben. So in addition to showing at the Bienale ORG,

Speaker 074.12s - 79.58s

Alice was the subject of a major solo exhibition at the UCCA June Art Museum ORG in Jinhuang

Speaker 179.58s - 163s

Doe, that closed just last week, and has a show fours coming at the Vincent Price Art Museum ORG in the spring. She will participate in the International Programme Residency, the ISCP in New York GPE, later this year, and has previously presented solo exhibitions at capsule Shanghai, Human Resources in Los Angeles, the 18th Street, Art Centre in Santa Monica, and Ocap Museum in Cheyenne GPE. She's also participated in group exhibitions, screenings and performances at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions ORG,Armory Centre of the Arts, Parasite, K-11 Out Foundation in Hong Kong GPE, and The Hammer ORG. So just to situate listeners a little bit, Alice PERSON's untitled sculpture included in the Biennale is a floor piece comprised of over 100,000 interlocking black and white tiles. It lies at the heart of a section of the Biennale EVENT that reflects upon thedifferent ways in which we map time and space and is visible from several different perspectives, from the ground level as people walk past it, but also by viewers from the balconies on upper floors and from the elevators that rise over the power station of art, which is a repurposed electricity station on the banks of the Huangfu River LOC. So perhaps, Alice PERSON, if you don't mind, you could just begin by telling us a little bit about the work, the ideas behind it, the materials of which it's made,and the manner of its arrangement.

Speaker 0163.94s - 384.24s

Yeah, so as you mentioned, it's 100,000 hand-painted tiles, and they actually range from black to white in sort of this gray scale, 11 colors in between. And I guess if you believe in the Big Bang, our universe began 13.8 billion years ago with this massive explosion that happened,which scientists in the 1970s discovered through radio telescopes that we can still, quote, unquote, hear that sound of the explosion. And so with, you know, sort of everyday appliances like television or radio, we can actually receive the transmissions from the past. This so-called sound fossil was something I was quite interested in exploring as a material. Of course, it's something that's invisible, yetpable and so one thing I thought would be interesting was to use a sort of an index of it that was translated from the electromagnetic waves into well from the radio section of the EMS ORG spectrum into thevisible spectrum which is you can see it in the television. Back in the day before we went digital, you can still see snow on television. And that snow is sort of the scrambling of chaotic signal. And embedded within that snow is the cosmic background radiation, which is that explosion that you can hear. And when I first was looking at this image,I wasn't really sure how to exactly translate it into a sculptural form. And so part of my practice in looking into sculptures is to think about it as a framework, to explore metaphysical questions. And so when I was presented an opportunity actually to exhibit at Human Resources in Los Angeles, it's a former movie theater. And so in the main exhibition space,it's this vast atrium-like cube. And then on the second floor, there are these projection boots that were turned into galleries. So I was quite interested in seeing how I can make a sculpture that presented different vantage points and allowed sort of different ontological sort of being of the sculpture. So when you first, as you mentioned earlier in introduction,when you first enter the exhibition space on it's the same level of this as the sculpture, you know, it is this flat, massive flat object. But when you approach it from the second floor or other higher elevations and looking down at it, you can really see it as an image. So I was interested in how both it's this immersive, physical, phenomenological experience, as if you're engulfed by this chaotic field.But at the same time, when you are higher up, you can see its entirety as an image as something that's providing almost like a semiotic meaning that we recognize it to be chaos. So it's really interesting how sculpture as a medium could shape shift actually into these different things.

Speaker 1390s - 400.46s

So this is effectively one way of representing the white noise that we otherwise see on analog televisions when they're detuned, right? It's the same phenomenon. It's the same background radiation. Is that right? That's correct, yes. And so when you're arranging these

Speaker 0400.46s - 406.72s

tiles that are black and white and, you know, degrees in between, when you're organizing them on the floor,

Speaker 1407s - 412.5s

what governs their arrangement? What's the kind of guiding principle behind this chaos?

Speaker 0413.5s - 512.08s

Yeah, that's a really great question. So I have a map and the map itself is this, like, you know, a 750 page document or book. And so it printed on A4 PRODUCT paper. And each map is 12 inches by 12 inches. And so it's a very sort of labor intensive activity. I sort of, when I was making it myself, I thought of it as almost like, you know, the Tibetan NORP sandpaintings when they make the mandala. It's this, you know, multiple people are covering over this massive, flat object. I think it was very much inspired by. I actually saw it in the Herzog film where he went to Tibet GPE. Yeah. So it's like this like laboring over this thing, this image that was really very much a portal into sort of a different dimension. And, you know, normally, to me, it's, you know, that information is, of course,an integral part of the work, but to me it's more the work is sort of released almost from that original sort of inspiration, but becomes sort of, I was much more interested in it as like this chaotic sort of field or this sea of turbulence and you, you know, when your eyes get locked into it, it really kind of draws you in and I sort of imagine my mind sort of swimming in it, you know,sort of taking it out of the physicality of it, but into this imaginary space.

Speaker 1514.24s - 572.5s

Yeah, I mean, the thing I guess about having these two different perspectives on it in the Biennale is that up close from ground level it does appear as chaos. It's incredibly immersive. It feels like it brings you in but doesn't, it does appear as chaos. It's incredibly immersive. It feels like it brings you in but doesn't. It's very difficult to construct anything out of it.But actually, when you do go up to the kind of mezzanine levels and look down, I found myself beginning to identify patterns, even though I know that the patterns aren't conscious or deliberate, but actually it's very difficult to prevent one's mind from finding these kind of organizations or patterns, let's say. And I wondered if that was related in some way to this idea. You've talked about the work existing at the kind of, I mean, you mentioned it there,between chaos and order or between what we can understand and what we can't understand. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about that kind of border zone and how your work interrogates it or attempts to slip between the two.

Speaker 0573.86s - 645.42s

Yeah, that's such an interesting point because when I was making it, I was just following this map, you know, this almost mindlessly following a map. But then once it was installed, I realized that, you know, the feeling of chaos or the feeling of turbulence, it's actually quite difficult to construct because somehow, you know, when you do think that you're making chaos, there is always some sort of internal logic to it.And I realize that what we perceive as chaos is just a language that we have no access to, but that there's always some kind of order in the universe. We just are not privy to it at the moment for some reason or, you know, sort of, yeah, we don't have enough knowledge to it. And I think for me that sort of, you know, opens up the space for mystery, for the unknown, and for uncertainty. And that's, I think, what I find fascinating about that sort of borderline that you're talking about, this sort of threshold, sort of at the limits of ourknowing, at the limits of language, at the limits of, you know, seeing or sensing.

Speaker 1647.54s - 742.34s

Yeah, I mean, the feeling, I think the word I always associate with that work, particularly, particularly as it was installed, was wonder, and it's very much this idea that actually it's pushing at the boundaries of what can be known. And it also makes very clear, I think, that human perception is limited to a very narrow register, let's say, our spectrum is small, and I guess we can construct patterns or meaning or order out of that which falls within this relatively narrow, visible, audible spectrum. But actually, it feels like this work,and your work generally alerts viewers to the existence of registers way beyond our conventional register, let's say. And I was really interested by that, that actually decided how do we push beyond it? What does it mean to find ways to articulate or express phenomena that by their nature exist outside our ability to recognise, but then to translate them into something that does give them some kind of form, or however contingent, and yet to still preserve that sense of mystery or strangeness.I think you wrote or said of a work that showed at UCCA ORG, which was this twinned black and white sculptures, that the physical boundary of the work is not limited to his visible expression. And I wondered if you could expand on that idea a little bit, the idea that actually the work might extend beyond our ability to see it, if that makes sense. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 0742.72s - 1022s

That sort of is almost like a throughline that touches on all of my work, my entire practice, I would say. There's a few things behind it. One of them is, you know, of course, I'm very much inspired by science, but not in, I would say, you know, if there is a traditional way artists are inspired by science. So first of all, I grew up with the, my father was a theoretical physicist. He's no longer working, but he was working on what's called a megawatt microwave laser being that was meant to intercept intercontinental ballistic missiles during the Cold War EVENT.And so, you know, he was working on within the electromagnetic spectrum of the parts that are invisible to the eye, but extremely deadly. And growing up, I don't even know how it seeped in, but to me it was always kind of this magical thing that, of course, we understand science to be something that's, you know, very factual and absolute and, you know, the truth. But at the same time, it really, it's, again, this like, it straddles this boundary between fact and fiction and fantasy and truth.And so, you know, mystery and science was always like kind of going hand in hand for me. And when I started, you know, making sculpture after graduate school, I was very drawn to working with forces that are invisible but helpful, always searching for something that, you know, is just beyond, again, this knowable space, just beyond something that's, you can almost touch it, but you don't know it, you know, this drive to seek that space. And it really kind of stems from a deep sense of curiosity. And as you said, wonder for the world. And going back to the sculptures that you're talking about, the black and white porcelain sculptures are modeling on the entanglement properties of subatomic particles, specifically hydrogen electrons.And so when I first began this project, I was very curious about quantum computers because I studied computer science and was, you know, sort of learned all about, you know, ones and zeros and sort of firing on and off. And that made sense to me because it was very much grounded this mechanistic idea of the universe or something that is very clear, you know. But the quantum realm is really this space of speculation and probabilities.And so I actually, I was teaching at NYU Shanghai ORG at the time and got in touch with my colleague, this physicist who is running the NYU ORG quantum technology lab. And so he brought me to his lab and showed me the quantum computer that he's building and the facilities. And they're just working with like photons or atoms, you know, the things that, you know, the building blocks of theuniverse of, you know, us, but that we cannot see it at all. And he sort of turned me on to this very interesting application called Mathematica PRODUCT. And I learned all about, you know, hydrogen electrons that could be modeled, the probabilistic clouds. So actually, the sculptures that you're talking about, they're actually almost like the DNA of the hydrogen electrons. I was interested in the sort of entanglement property that makes quantum computers so powerful that you can sort of shift states.I don't know. It has his own like autonomous decision making process. And so that's why they're sort of in this sort of phenomenologically opposition in effect. One is crackled glaze in white. So when you look at the surface, it's all cracked. whereas the other one is this black, shiny glaze. And this work is actually sort of the second of another series that I made originally in stainless steel, where the stainless steel was mirror finish. So the mirror finish is reflecting all light.And its twin counterpart is this matte black finish, was absorbing life. And so when you look at these sculptures, what's happening is actually you're leaving the Newtonian physical world and leaping into the subatomic realm, almost like, yeah, Alice in Wonderland WORK_OF_ART, I guess.

Speaker 11022s - 1145.82s

Yeah, I mean, what's, there's so much, I mean, what's interesting is like both those twin sculptors, as you talk about them, both those sculptures and the work you presented at the Biennale EVENT, I guess in their consideration of phenomena that are deeply antithetical to a mechanistic construction of the universe, either the idea that were underpinned by this kind of chaotic background radiation, or that there is, you know, this form of entanglement which fundamentally seems to work against the principle of cause and effect. Both of these are fundamentalprinciples that really undermine at a very basic level. The way we organise the world, I mean, just on a day-to-day basis, how our minds create order out of the world, how we assume that there is a world which will continue to behave in ways that are predictable to us. And it was interesting when you were talking about your father. Like my brother worked at MIT ORG for a long time and was similarly engaged in, he was actually in kind of weather and engineering.But I had the same experience of him of just, you know, talking about this and realizing how far into the realms of kind of pure speculation it was. And this idea that actually this kind of scientific inquiry wasn't secure, actually, in the way that I think one tends to assume that scientific inquiry is that its foundations were totally, you know, were really shaky when you got down to it. And that actually it was speculative and strange. And then you reached this point, I think, which is kind of what interests me in your work, or, you know, were really shaky when you got down to it. And that actually it was speculative and strange. And then you reached this point, I think, which is kind of what interests me in your work,or, you know, as you talk about it, that actually when you get down to these very fundamental levels, then the conventional language doesn't work any longer. And actually both in kind of mathematical language, but also in terms of just the way we speak about the world, no longer holds.And actually it then becomes important to find other forms of language or other ways of thinking. And it's interesting then seeing, I guess, a lot of, you know, people working in quantum physics reach for, you know, or look to Buddhism, for instance, as a way of potentially figuring that kind of chaos or emptiness.

Speaker 01146.42s - 1151.8s

But also the idea that really when you get to those points, you have to find a way of speaking or

Speaker 11151.8s - 1205.28s

communicating that is unconventional because the language doesn't hold. And actually, your work seems very much engaged in that. Like, what are the ways of figuring this? How do you present it in ways that aren't, I guess, beholden to ideas that no longer really function at that level? And that seems to me compelling. And I wonder if you think of it in those terms as a kind of,I mean, I think it sounds like a little bit like you did, like you're trying to find, not to kind of communicate just a sense of wonder, but actually to push right at that sense of what you can articulate, that actually these might be ways of not only kind of hinting at the unknown, but pushing the boundaries that they're known a little by finding different registers, by finding different ways of figuring these things.Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 01205.44s - 1241.86s

And I just want to backtrack a little bit. You know, when you're talking about this, this is several years ago, I was really kind of grappling with this fact of our sort of being in the world right now is not aligned with, you know, scientific understandings of reality,which is really troubling because, you know, scientific understandings of reality, which is really troubling because, you know, so then I started looking into that moment in the Renaissance when we went from a geocentric worldview into a heliocentric worldview, looking into Copernicus PERSON's life. And, you know, it was,

Speaker 11241.96s - 1291.26s

it's such a fascinating moment that he, you know, that he didn't, you know, get burnt at the stake, although this other scientist Bruno did, which he, Bruno, I think, was the first one that was talking about the sun possibly being the center of the universe. Yeah, I don't, I haven't really reconciled with it. But I think what you're suggesting is, you know, I think in some ways what I'm trying to do within my art practice itself is trying to navigate that space where how do you operate within the unknown and recognizing that I'm not interested in, you know, sort of operating within the domain of knowledge that we are already sort of like almost like feeling super secured about. And part of that I think for me is in any exhibition making process,

Speaker 01291.44s - 1354.22s

I was trying to sort of establish a kind of framework. And you mentioned my exhibitions at 183 Art Center ORG, for example, which is my first solo show I've ever done. And the press release I wrote for it made absolutely no sense to most people and I realized you know in some ways it was kind of like a career of suicide and knowing the first show that you're going to have nobody understands you and that's already like your work is not understandable tobegin with and and sort of follow suit with you know my first show at capsule what I presented was actually these letters to give the secret away. The letters were, it was actually just basically the periodic table written as letters. A friend of mine was like, oh, it looks like an alien language. And I thought that was quite beautiful, that it could be an alien language. But the periodic table is the fundamental building blocks of everything, you know.And so I think I'm always trying to figure out a way to sort of tote that line, but, you know, whether or not I'm successful at it, it's always there's that attempt at trying to do it.

Speaker 11355.68s - 1406.5s

That's really beautiful. I think actually it brings us to one thing that I did want to talk about, which is I'm kind of wary of making your work sound because it's so deeply engaged in kind of scientific principles and theory, but it's also incredibly effective.And I wondered if we might talk, I'm conscious actually, the time is passing very quickly. But if we might talk about that, I might communicate that idea. And there was a line from one of your films called Oracle WORK_OF_ART,which really struck me when I was watching it. And maybe I can just read that line and if you wouldn't mind responding to it. The line was, I admit, I've been feeling pretty melancholic lately, in general, about being in this world, a kind of geometric sadness. And it was that geometric sadness that I was particularly struck by. I wondered if you might expand on geometric sadness.

Speaker 01407.28s - 1542.96s

Yeah, this is something I have to figure out to articulate. Because one of the things I realize, it's, you know, I feel like I'm not, I wish I was a poet because I feel like poetry is something that sort of, you know, the language, like the use of language is almost like the sculptor using material. And the way I think of art is through this sort of poetic lens or an aesthetic experience. But the sort of collapsing of two words that creates the space that has so much dimension to it.One of the things I realized is that up until my early 20s, I was on this track to become either a computer programmer or getting into international affairs. I also studied international relations. So coming from this very sort of either mathematical or rational, logical mind, you know, examining the international system. You know, I'm very sort of like, you know, inclined to almost like a linear thinking, but thinking in this, I would just call it the Apollonian way. But at the same time, I'm so drawn to the sort of feelings and desire and pleasure and play. So I was always sort of thinking about how does one reconcile this collapse of the Apollonian and the Dionysian NORP?And really that I'm in between these two realms. You know, I'm not, I'm not just like a science person. I am interested in aesthetic experiences and poetry and feelings and emotions. So I think for me that phrase geometric sadness is it allows that sort of collapse. And the line that you read is a scene from the film where, so I filmed it, that phrased geometric sadness is it allows that sort of collapse. And the line that you read is a scene from the film where I filmed it with another artist,Ben Tong and we went to Biosphere 2 in Arizona, which is this enclosed three acre, literally earth number two on earth. And that scene was filmed in this glass and steel structure where it's supposed to simulate the ocean, right? So we're like the geometric forms that are reflecting from the sun into the water, and we're like rowing a boat. Yeah. It's a beautiful,

Speaker 11542.96s - 1593s

I don't know, it's a beautiful phrase that It really communicates that idea of, I guess, order being complicated by chaos and chaos being complicated by order. And yeah, this idea that, I guess, art and literature and even science, in its speculative sense, always exist at that boundary between what we know and what we've imposed ordered upon, order upon, and what we can't, what we can't work out. I think it's a beautiful phrase.And a lovely way to end. I'm sorry, we can't talk more, but I'll get told off by the people doing the other podcast. So I just wanted to say thank you so much, Alice PERSON. It's been a real pleasure. And we're so grateful to have your work in the Biennale EVENT. It's such a key work and actually so central to it, both literally and metaphorically.So thank you. Thank you.