“Entroposcenic!”: Representing Nature in the Exhibition Desert Now and Some Works of Julian Charrière

Abstract

Franco-Swiss multimedia artist Julian Charrière finds in the world’s most uninhabitable places the material that shapes his artistic research. Through the discussion of two exhibitions, Desert Now (Hencke and Samman 2016) with Felix Kiessling and Julius von Bismark, and Future Fossil Spaces (Charrière 2017), this article shows how Charrière critically reflects on romantic, western representations of the desert as a separate space untouched by human activity to reframe it as a liminal space where the relationship between mankind and nature is negotiated. While our perception of the desert is highly mediated—via national parks, westerns, or screen savers—Charrière’s installations show that the desert is the resource that needs to be physically hollowed out for this imaginary experience to take place, and for western existence to go on: salt flats are mined to extract the lithium used in batteries; nuclear test sites were made forever uninhabitable for the sake of a technology built for imperialist domination over nations and nature, whose domestic applications sustain digital infrastructures. Life nonetheless continues to thrive but is transformed. Charrière’s dystopic “entroposcenes” are poetic invitations to reflect on how the West’s use of the desert induces its own literal and metaphorical desertification, and to contemplate new ways for life to go on in a man-made desert.