Green Wilderness
2020 - 2021
interactive website, sound, photography
The project is about artificial textures and imagined territories.
I found the old radio in Hulunbuir - a border region in Inner Mongolia in China - and it was from Outer Mongolia under Soviet rule. Before it could receive radio signals from various cities across Eurasia. I embroidered the map on its texture using virtual means, the territory is nothing but a product of imagination.
The audio clip is from the "To steppe area broadcasting" part of the Hulunbuir Mongolian radio channel on January 5, 2021. In the remote nomadic area, people can only receive radio signals. Strangely enough, instead of broadcasting news from the city and the "modern" world, this part plays so-called traditional Mongolian nomadic music. The representation of itself once again arrives from the city's radio station to the remote steppe areas. It is a strange mirroring circulation. As a result, the "Green Wilderness" also becomes a strange kind of space.
Hulunbuir is part of the Mongolian-Manchurian steppe. In an era when nomadism is becoming more and more marginalized, this region has seen rapid growth in tourism and has become a sad place of mass production of exotic imagery.
I use this website (a carrier of the digital landscape and an alternative way of mapping) to discuss how to be together. The longer "being together" in the site, the more the imagination and information fade, and the image is increasingly left as noise. Also, the textures with corrupted data remind people of the fictional nature of the landscape.
