RARE EARTH (11'47")
Mischa Daams
In our tech-fetishized society the continuous supply-and-disposal of digital needs comes with vast physical consequences. By the industrial city of Baotou, Northern China, a toxic lake has arisen where once was farmland. This so called “tailings pond” is an artificial lake made up of dumped toxic and radioactive waste from refineries that extract the precious rare-earth minerals essential for our consumer electronics. From a human perspective this might look like a dystopian nightmare but compare it to the primordial soups that supposedly brought life... What would this melting pot of chemical interactions actually bring forth? Could it at the same time look eerily familiar and natural? Rare-earth zooms into an ever-evolving soup of structure and anomalies.

RARE EARTH / Mischa Daams