Suki Chan’s Interval II (2008) reflects similarly on space and time, connecting the precise swarming and flight patterns of migratory birds with human communities that have travelled vast distances to inhabit rural regions.

ikkibawikrrr’s Rhapsody (2024) juxtaposes field recordings of nature, artillery, and the civilian community within the Korean Demilitarised Zone (DMZ). In this buffer territory between North and South Korea, flora and fauna flourish with minimal human intervention, depicting a landscape that simultaneously harbours life, death, violence, and beauty. Featuring objects like plastic bags and boxes being propelled across an uninhabited environment by an unknown force, Dances with Trash (2024) offers a humorous depiction of waste as seemingly sentient once free from human interference. In Yuyan Wang’s digital collage work Grey Green Black Brown (2024), disparate elements are bound together by a mysterious dark slime. The film exposes the dystopian reality of petro-capitalism and extractive industries, upending the idealised narrative of the global tech industry.

The programme ends with Saodat Ismailova’s Melted in the Sun (2024), which explores the figure of Al-Muqanna, an eighth-century political revolutionary and religious leader who drew upon Zoroastrian and Islamic ideologies. The work examines the interplay of power, technology, magic, and environmental manipulation across vast archaeological sites in Uzbekistan, most strikingly in its giant solar furnace.