Conceptualized in the wake of auto-generated toxicities that swarm in the air, the Aerosol  Chronicles Capture Omlojan tries to speculate what kinds of worlds would emerge when air itself becomes unstable. What happens when air can no longer be assumed to be implicitly equated with oxygen? In the process of this speculation, this artwork also takes a detour through the policed enclosures of colonial forests in South Asia and those incendiary events that appeared to interrupt the disciplinary regime of accumulation. Perhaps it is a looped and folded line that threads together the hubris of ‘scientifically’ managed colonial forests and those twenty-first-century contraptions aiming to engineer human survival through planetary meddling. Some of these geoengineering projects paint an unsettling vision: the large-scale capturing of atmospheric carbon as the optimal solution for managing global warming while allowing emissions to continue dumping carbon into the air. Now, as you trace the various detours and blind alleys of the oxygen dilemma with this artwork, will you also catch your own reflection in the menacing glint of those shiny, human-made contraptions?

Film in seven chapters, animation, colour, sound

Videos with varying durations from 6 min 5 sec to 7 min 45 sec

Acknowledgments: Dr. Richard Zare, Dr. Ramakrishna Ramaswamy

Commissioned and produced by Khoj International Artists’ Association and Thyssen Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21) for st_age

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