Opening on November 9, The 14th Shanghai Biennale, Cosmos Cinema, includes the solar-powered video by Nicholas Mangan, Ancient Lights, (2015).
Curated by Anton Vidokle, Zairong Xiang, Hallie Ayres, Lukas Brasiskis, and Ben Eastham, the biennale explores how our societal relationship with the cosmos shapes human life on earth.
“Ancient Lights” explores connections between the Aztec Sun Stone, rediscovered at Zócalo, Mexico City where it was buried following the Spanish Conquest; the Gemasolar plant in the South of Spain; images of tree-rings taken at the Laboratory of Tree Ring Research (University of Arizona), used to analyse sun spot activity; and the research of Soviet scientist Alexander Tchijevsky’s (1897-1964) that attempted to correlate sun spot activity in the 11-year solar cycle with human activity. This work places the sun at the center of a series of cyclical systems, both geophysical and cultural.