An artwork can only effectively participate in such a transformation, then, by participating in an interdisciplinary project of a scientific realism where the force of artistic concept lies in its grasp of relations—which might be understood as a type of montage—that is, direction without ground. This entails abandoning the category of the uncategorisable, dismantling a politics that establishes itself through the ordering of ontological and non-ontological dimensions and overcoming the fear of “repetition,” which is often connected to our anxieties about continuity and stability. It also requires us to once again understand the image as a critical political project.¹

1. The New Realists

French philosopher Michel Serres once offered the English romantic landscape painter, J. M. W. Turner, a praise that appears both peculiar and meaningful within the history of art, calling him “the first true genius in thermodynamics” and a genuine “realist.”² For Serres, Turner’s paintings—replete with mist, fire and steam—are not merely precursors to Impressionism; rather, they perceptively capture how matter, transformed by “fire,” frees itself from the constraints of classical perspective and geometric line, revealing the novel operational logic of the industrial world. This recognition of energy flow and surging velocity likewise resonated between Victorian literature and science—such as the poet Tennyson’s description in In Memoriam of “a web is wov'n ³,” which physicist James Clerk Maxwell regarded as a consummate metaphor for electromagnetic effects.

Artists of this period actively situated themselves within a fluctuating cosmic order. However, the “realism” of this era remained overshadowed by the grand narrative of the “domestication” of nature in the industrial age. As a symbol of order, the machine’s ultimate objective was to transmute the disordered, inefficient and “free” primal forces of nature into a regulated order, subservient to the enhancement of efficiency. This intensified production of nature formed a technological 'Napoleonism' or energetic 'Leviathanism'—metaphors for the ambition to impose centralized administration and absolute sovereign control over natural forces—which profoundly reshaped political-geographic concepts such as modern regimes, territories, and nation-states. For much of the twentieth century, confronted with this expansionist epistemic framework, art often pivoted towards critique, assuming the pessimistic role of anti-alienation or eschatological warning, attempting to maintain a distance from the incessantly accelerating industrial civilisation.

Liu Chuang, 'Bitcoin Mining and Field Recordings of Ethnic Minorities', 2018. Three-channel video, colour, sound, 03:29. Images courtesy of the artist.

In the contemporary context, a new breed of “realist/realism” is quietly emerging in artistic practice. Unlike the pessimistic critics of the twentieth century, these artists no longer seek escape but instead reimmerse themselves into the highly unstable dynamic structures of the world. Grounded in interdisciplinary research practice, they attempt to engage new issues of the “real” within the complex material and technological networks of the present. Liu Chuang’s recent artistic practice—particularly his investigations revolving around energy conversion, infrastructural networks and data flows—positions him as a pivotal figure in this lineage of “new realists.”

2. Planetary Montage

Since 2017, artist Liu Chuang and I have been monitoring news regarding Bitcoin. That year witnessed a frenetic surge in Bitcoin’s development, with prices leaping from $1,000 at the start of the year to $15,000 by year’s end; its financial speculative nature drove the world into a frenzy. Amidst the deluge of information, one item caught our attention and effectively shaped the fundamental direction of our subsequent research. In an article titled “Chinese Bitcoin Mines Migrate Overseas: Seeking Regions with Lenient Policies,” ⁴ the author recounted through journalistic prose a grand narrative that was widely overlooked at the time. The report detailed how China, leveraging its robust power infrastructure and inexpensive thermal, hydro and wind energy resources, had monopolised the upstream mining industry chain of Bitcoin. Locations such as Ordos in Inner Mongolia (once home to one of the world’s largest mining farms due to abundant energy and cheap thermal power) and Sichuan (relying on ample hydropower and numerous small-scale, off-grid hydroelectric stations to utilise “discarded electricity” to lower costs) became hubs for Bitcoin mining operations. To ensure mining rigs operated 24 hours a day, “miners” were compelled to relocate like migratory birds to places like Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang during Sichuan’s dry season; some even ventured to Cambodia and the Philippines. However, by late 2017, China’s tightening cryptocurrency regulations led to multiple mining farms in many regions to exit or having their preferential electricity rates revoked. Consequently, the “miner” community began relocating to overseas regions such as Russia and Canada, where electricity was cheap and cold climates aided heat dissipation.

Liu Chuang, 'Bitcoin Mining and Field Recordings of Ethnic Minorities', 2018. Three-channel video, colour, sound, 05:45. Images courtesy of the artist.

This news story embodies a profoundly contemporary planetary mindset. It reveals that even virtual currency—the most abstract of entities, priding itself on decentralisation—remains fundamentally reliant on planetary energy resources. The migration routes of the “miners” constitute, in reality, a geographical and climatic map redrawn by capital logic; computational power is generated not only within processors but is directly constrained by monsoons, rainfall, river gradients and Siberian cold currents. This “migratory” movement reconnects high-tech financial speculation with “geographical determinism,” linking blockchain technology to the Earth's most primordial elements, “water” and “fire,” compelling us to re-examine technology: it is no longer an ascent detached from nature but a geological force deeply embedded within the planet we inhabit.

Liu Chuang’s resulting reflections reveal a profound understanding of “geoengineering” and the medium’s “deep time.” This new realist sensibility manifests in his ability to powerfully connect seemingly uncategorisable historical fragments, technological infrastructure and geological mutations through speculative deduction. This connection is not a simple juxtaposition but a “montage” of relations. Just as Reza Negarestani views petroleum as a material clue to the narrative of the Earth’s historical narrative,⁵  Liu Chuang likewise initiates his intellectual odyssey from the chain of energy flows. His vision is based on a grand premise: the Earth has never been as uncertain as it is today, and humanity needs to continually reconstruct its epistemological framework on a “planetary scale.” In this new state of nature, there is no longer a “Leviathan” to be tamed; in its place are various active agents, locked in conflict along blurred frontlines. Art is hereby given a renewed task: can it once again assume responsibility of describing the ever-escalating processes of material and energy circulation?

3. The Zomia Machine

Liu Chuang, 'Bitcoin Mining and Field Recordings of Ethnic Minorities', 2018. Three-channel video, colour, sound, 12:42. Images courtesy of the artist.

The 2017 distribution map of Chinese Bitcoin mining farms overlaps almost perfectly with James C. Scott's concept of “Zamia” – that anarchic enclave spanning Southeast Asia's highlands, historically evading state control. This is no coincidence but a deep historical resonance. If traditional Zomia was a “zone of refuge” or “shatter zone” formed by upland communities exploiting rugged terrain to evade conscription and taxation from lowland states, then the Bitcoin mining farms constitute the digital reincarnation of this “Zomia Machine.”

Historically, upland communities developed an “evasive agriculture” centred on tuber crops to prevent the state from surveying and taxation of visible surface-grown crops; today, miners in the same folded terrain utilise hydropower—a fluid energy source difficult to fully capture and control—to produce Bitcoin, a cryptographic asset designed to evade financial regulation and sovereign endorsement. Here, the resistance of terrain is transmuted into a defensive barrier, rendering these territories, once viewed as the domain of “barbarians,” the foremost experimental grounds of global capitalism. Here, the rushing river is no longer merely a source of irrigation or illumination; it is directly translated into hash rate, completing an alchemical transformation from natural kinetic energy to virtual capital.

Liu Chuang, 'Bitcoin Mining and Field Recordings of Ethnic Minorities', 2018. Three-channel video, colour, sound, 13:22. Images courtesy of the artist.

In this Zomia machine, functioning as an apparatus of escape, marginalised ethnic minorities and marginalised computational nomads converge within the same geographical space. Throughout the work, we witness Bitcoin farming mines operating as infrastructure of contemporary financial capitalism, overlapping with the voices of ethnic minorities bearing ancient cultural DNA. Artist Liu Chuang's primary task lies in giving audiovisual form to this “overlap” audio visual form. He keenly observes the cables stretching across mountain valleys—spreading across the mountain slopes like nerve endings, transmitting not only electricity but also a decentralised ideology. These cables function less as infrastructure than as new totemic structures, connecting the geographical margins to the core of the global financial networks.

Even more intriguing is the dual reference of the “machine”: on one hand, the arrays of roaring mining rigs, whose ceaseless low-frequency noise/drone constitutes a new soundscape; on another, the mutual erosion, overlay, and even fusion of this mechanical roar with the chanting of ethnic minorities in agricultural fields. A chain of energy, finance and sound is thus forged: sound is currency, energy is power. ⁶  From the perspective of “planetary realism,” this is not merely a visual spectacle but an auditory trauma—the ceaseless noise marks the residue left behind when natural energy is forcibly stripped from its ecosystem. Capital severed nature’s cycles, converting flowing water into virtual capital, leaving behind only waste heat and noise. This proves that this Zomia machine is both a device of escape and a trap of capture; it reenacts the historical tension between frontier population and state authority while prefiguring a form of resource alchemy under technological accelerationism.

Liu Chuang, 'Bitcoin Mining and Field Recordings of Ethnic Minorities', 2018. Three-channel video, colour, sound, 18:06. Images courtesy of the artist.

4. Poetics of Infrastructure

In Liu Chuang’s moving images, colossal dams, crisscrossing transmission lines and mining rigs humming within the ruins of hydroelectric stations collectively weave a material grid on a planetary scale. If the “Zomia Machine” deals with spatial folding, then the “Poetics of Infrastructure” in Bitcoin Mining and Field Recordings of Ethnic Minorities endeavours to reveal temporal recursion. Infrastructure is not merely functional conduit; it is simultaneously the corporeal manifestation of power, undergoing a biological-like evolution throughout history: from the postal stations of the Qin and Han dynasties to the telegraphs and railways of the late Qing, finally crystallising into the fiber-optic networks carrying cloud computing today. The “Poetics of Infrastructure” constitutes the most “substantial” facet of Liu Chuang’s work, exposing the exceedingly heavy/weighty material corporeality of this system.

This infrastructural archaeology challenges the fantasy of viewing it either as a “global” seamless grid or as a linear narrative of pure technological progress. It reveals that any escapist virtual dream must ultimately be grounded through large-scale material transformation projects. This tracking of material and energy trajectories guides the artist’s gaze from financial capital towards specific geographical folds—those imperceptible margins of power at the peripheries of infrastructure. This provides a foundational framework for us to further understand how technology embeds itself within the temporal dimensions of geology and anthropology.

Liu Chuang, 'Bitcoin Mining and Field Recordings of Ethnic Minorities', 2018. Three-channel video, colour, sound, 14:38. Images courtesy of the artist.

These dams and power stations once symbolised humanity’s conquest and transformation of nature; today, however, they have become “toxic infrastructure,” ⁷ serving as “contact zones” where technological and political ideals of different generations clash. Liu Chuang’s “Poetics of Infrastructure” thus possesses an “anti-conquest” quality. He does not attempt to classify all things and subsume them into a European order like a traditional naturalist; instead, through field recordings and image montage, he releases the “aesthetic agency of Gaia” repressed by infrastructure. In his work, the sounds of wind, water and machinery intertwine with the chanting of ethnic minorities; these non-human “material witnesses” collectively resist attempts to reduce the Earth to a singular data model.

Liu Chuang, 'Bitcoin Mining and Field Recordings of Ethnic Minorities', 2018. Three-channel video, colour, sound, 20:00. Images courtesy of the artist.

It is from this entry point that Liu Chuang’s work operates, ultimately establishing his role as a "Scale Decider." Within the Anthropocene paradigm, traditional linear scales have become invalid; a vast cognitive chasm exists between microscopic transistor vibrations and macroscopic planetary geological shifts— what T.J. Demos refers to as the crisis of “the politics of representation.” ⁸ Facing this crisis, Liu Chuang rejects a singular anthropocentric perspective, turning instead to forcibly fold these originally “incommensurable scales” into a single narrative montage. Through these abrupt leaps in scale, Liu Chuang reveals how the true “planetary” entity, entangled by countless heterogeneous forces beneath the veneer of globalisation, actually functions.

Liu Chuang, 'Bitcoin Mining and Field Recordings of Ethnic Minorities', 2018. Three-channel video, colour, sound, 24:53. Images courtesy of the artist.

Artist Bio
Liu Chuang (b. 1978, Tianmen) currently lives and works in Shanghai. Chuang works primarily with film, sculpture, readymade and installation to integrate long-term histories and ecological arcs for imagination, tracing the social, cultural and economic transformations of contemporary China. Weaving narratives that connect the micro and macro, past and present, fiction and reality, Chuang explores how vast and complex changes in nature, tradition, demographics, cutting-edge technology, and socio-economic systems affect individuals and their engagements with the world as a whole. He has exhibited widely, with his works being featured in museums worldwide including Centre Pompidou, Paris (2024); Luma Westbau, Zurich, (2024); Swiss Institute, New York (2024); M+ Museum, Hong Kong (2024); Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Aichi (2024); National Museum of Contemporary Art (ΕΜΣΤ), Athens (2022); Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo (2022); Kunsthalle Basel, Basel (2021); Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul (2021); among others. His recent biennales and triennials include Sharjah Biennial 16 (2025), 4th Xinjiang China International Art Biennial (2024), Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale (2024); 11th Seoul Mediacity Biennale (2021); 13th Shanghai Biennale (2021), 3rd Guangzhou Image Triennale (2021), Kathmandu Triennale 2077 (2021), amongst others.

His recent biennales and triennials include Sharjah Biennial 16 (2025), 4th Xinjiang China International Art Biennial (2024), Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale (2024); 11th Seoul Mediacity Biennale (2021); 13th Shanghai Biennale (2021), 3rd Guangzhou Image Triennale (2021), Kathmandu Triennale 2077 (2021), amongst others.

About the Writer
Dr. Yang Beichen is a researcher and a curator based in Beijing, currently serving as Director of MACA Art Center, and Associate Professor at the Central Academy of Drama. Prior to that, he was a senior editor of Artforum.com.cn (2012–2017), a guest researcher at the New Century Art Foundation (NCAF, 2019–2021), and one of the members of the Thought Council at the Fondazione Prada (2021–2023). His research explores the agency and potentialities of the moving image in the context of contemporary technology and ecology. Utilizing media archaeology as a radical framework, he excavates alternative modernities and reinterprets history and geopolitics from a New Materialist perspective. His curatorial practices grow out of and attest to his multidisciplinary academic approaches. Dr. Yang’s notable curatorial projects include “New Metallurgists” (Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf), “Micro-Era” (Kulturforum, Berlin), the Guangzhou Image Triennial 2021 “The Intermingling Flux” (Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou), “Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg: A MOON WRAPPED IN BROWN PAPER” (Prada Rong Zhai, Shanghai) , “Cao Fei: Tidal Flux” (Museum of Art Pudong, Shanghai), among others

Endnotes
¹ Amanda Beech, “Art and its ‘Science’,” in Speculative Aesthetics, ed. Robin Mackay, Luke Pendrell, and James Trafford (Urbanomic, 2014), 23.
² Michel Serres, “Turner traduit Carnot,” in Hermès III: La Traduction (Les Éditions de Minuit, 1974), 57.
³ Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H. (Edward Moxon, 1850), 95: 12–16.
⁴ Peng Liu, “Chinese Bitcoin Mines Migrate Overseas: Seeking Regions with Lenient Policies [Zhongguo bitebi kuangchang haiwai qianxi: xunzhao zhengce kuansong zhidi],” Tencent Finance, February 19, 2018, https://news.qq.com/rain/a/FIN2018021900684100.
⁵ See Reza Negarastani, Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials (re.press, 2008).
⁶ In the film, the artist references King Jing's monetary reform. To cast a set of chime bells named “Wuyi,” King Jing confiscated and melted down circulating copper coins. Liu Chuang acutely points out the “radical inversion” constituted by this act: in antiquity, the ruler destroyed currency to cast musical instruments, attempting to discipline the cosmic order by fixing musical temperaments and capturing untamable natural sounds like thunder; whereas in the contemporary Zomia Machine, the immense industrial noise generated day and night by mining rigs, through the consumption of nature’s rushing hydro energy, is ultimately crystallised into a singular mathematical truth—Bitcoin.
⁷ Josephine Berry, Planetary Realism: Art Against Apocalypse (Sternberg Press, 2025), 27. For the author, such infrastructure constitutes the material force driving “planetary divorce”—namely, while it connects human economic activities, it severs the organic link between humans and geological reality, as well as the ecological environment.
⁸ T. J. Demos, Against the Anthropocene: Visual Culture and Environment Today (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2017), 12.