Letters from the Desert
This artwork employs phytomining—a technique that extracts copper from metal-accumulating plants in e-waste contaminated areas—to create a small wind chime. When stirred by the wind, the metallic clinking contrasts sharply with plants' rustling whispers, both sounds becoming audible manifestations of environmental alienation.
For nearly three decades, coastal Chinese cities have profited from processing international e-waste. Workers use crude methods to extract precious metals, turning excessive electronic refuse into this era's new 'mines.' Yet such metallurgy disperses heavy metals into broader ecosystems, where they ascend the food chain to accumulate within our own bodies. Will living organisms become the next epoch's mines? These plant-concentrated heavy metals possess stability transcending human timescales.
Humans perish, and winds shift, but the phytomined chime remains in the fields like an epitaph—each chime bearing witness to that era of recklessness.