Texture of the Earth and Skin We're In

This article re-examines the concept of “environmental media” by synthesizing insights from media theory, new materialism, and object-oriented ontology. Arguing against traditional views of media as mere information carriers or tools for human control over nature, the paper proposes a new definition. Drawing dialectically on the philosophies of Martin Heidegger and Graham Harman, it posits that media are intermediary entities that function as interfaces for encounters between diverse, heterogeneous agents. Through these interfaces, entities partially reveal and “unsecure” themselves to one another, often leading to uncanny and unpredictable outcomes. The article further introduces “attunement” as a crucial concept for understanding how different agencies, both human and nonhuman, can interact and co-become within these medial spaces, despite their inherent differences and the friction that arises from their encounters. By analyzing examples from land art, such as Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty, and theoretical frameworks from scholars like John Durham Peters and Jane Bennett, the paper demonstrates how environmental media can serve as platforms for polyphonic co-becoming, where negotiation, instability, and repair take precedence over control and static representation. Ultimately, this reframing of media challenges anthropocentric biases and offers a path toward a more ecological and collaborative understanding of our entangled world.

In this article, I trace three theoretical lineages of media geology in a broad sense: media archaeology, ecopoetics, and the geological turn. Through this intellectual archaeology, I elucidate how a geological perspective in media studies helps us address the crises of the Anthropocene (or alternative terms). By introducing Sasha Litvintseva’s notion of Geological Filmmaking, I argue that resorting to non-human modes of representation intervenes in and complicates Jussi Parikka’s technicist framework. Finally, I analyze Chinese filmmaker Zhao Liang's documentary Behemoth (2016) on mining cities in Inner Mongolia, adding a Global South perspective to this sometimes overly Eurocentric theory.

In this essay, I explore how his film Among The Palms The Bomb, or: Looking for Reflections in the Toxic Field of Plenty (2024) mediates invisible toxicity (and its history) in a complex, layered manner.

In this essay, borrowing the Chinese metaphor of "stones from other hills", I demonstrate the value of obscure language.

Curatorial statement for the exhibition of the same name. This essay explores the political urgency of speculative creation using highly material digital media.

This exhibition review explores artistic practices that complicate local memories and private narratives.