As I delved into Mari Nagem’s work, I encountered research that explores the relationship between digital culture and nature. Using various media, vibrant colors, and striking contours, her works highlight the artificiality of landscapes, the subjectivity of data, and the capitalist pursuit of happiness. With thought-provoking titles, Nagem questions existence and attempts to bring sensitivity to our connection with machines. Among her works, one in particular caught my attention: Infinitum. I opened the video link and spent minutes in an infinite scroll through layers of rocks appearing on my screen. I wondered if those rocks could somehow hear or feel my presence, reminiscent of the story told by American anthropologist Elizabeth Povinelli about the Larrakia people and their relationship with Old Man Rock. The sensation was that the geological and digital layers were deeply connected, as if the time and materiality of the rocks blended with the virtual logic of the generative video.

The story I referred to in the previous paragraph is narrated by Povinelli in the article “Do rocks listen?” (1995). She describes a hearing in the Kenbi Land Claim process, in which the Larrakia people sought rights to the Cox Peninsula in Australia. During the hearing, a woman from the Belyuen community explained that the sacred rock known as Old Man Rock, central to their cosmology, could feel and hear her people when they hunted, gathered food, or rested in the area. The state official responsible for assessing the cultural authenticity of this account listened to the woman but based his analysis primarily on Western premises: he could only perceive the economic and ecological value of the land scientifically and objectively, disregarding the cultural perspective.

The author uses this story to argue that Western thought is rooted in what she calls the “carbon imaginary,” a logic that separates life and non-life based on biological processes such as birth, growth, reproduction, and death. Entities like rocks and minerals are seen as inert and ontologically irrelevant. However, the ecological crisis of the Anthropocene challenges this paradigm, revealing that environmental degradation is also a civilizational and epistemological crisis. As an alternative to the situation we face, Povinelli proposes the construction of a “geontology,” a different way of thinking that recognizes the interdependence between organic and inorganic beings and challenges the separation between the physical world and the human.

One of the first steps toward building this alternative ontology suggests that we de-dramatize human extinction, perceiving it as part of an ongoing process of the disappearance of various forms of life that has been happening for centuries—we focus on the imminence of a major event, while our daily lives are marked by countless situations of suffering, precarity, and exhaustion, such as exterminations and degrading conditions imposed on certain individuals and peoples, as well as the continuous degradation of Earth’s beings, treated only as natural resources. Instead of focusing exclusively on the preservation of humanity, geontology broadens the concern to include the arrangements that sustain all existences.

Could the artist Mari Nagem, in her work, be mobilizing some of the operators of what we have called in the previous paragraphs geontology?

Firstly, we might say that Calorcito, Nagem’s solo exhibition, engages with the realm of science fiction, or rather, speculative fiction. At first glance, this statement, which I chose to open the text with, does not carry a value judgment. However, a closer look leads us to interpret it in a way that asserts that Nagem courageously inhabits her reality and, through fiction, seeks to build an alternative for the moment of climate catastrophe and the devastated land dominated by the internet and digital technologies. The exhibition prompts us to consider post-catastrophe scenarios, where technological ruins and new landscapes emerge, suggesting that Earth will continue to transform, even without human presence. It explores the intersection of the natural and the artificial, projecting a reality in which the planet is shaped in unpredictable and unknown ways.

In this context, heat, the central theme here, goes beyond connecting life and inert matter, representing both the transformative power of the Earth and the devastating effects of human action. Nagem questions the traditional separation between the organic and the inorganic, highlighting the interdependence between natural, technological, and biological processes. In the installation Poente, for example, part of the RGB series, the sunset is recreated through artificial lights, associating the color red with a scene of dryness and desolation. The reflections that would have previously formed on the water now project directly onto the ground, reinforcing the idea of a collapse between nature and technology. With this work, the artist seems to suggest that even in the absence of humans, the planet continues to transform, inhabited by technological remnants, microscopic life forms, and plastic ruins.

In Heat Waves, Nagem explores the dissolution of boundaries between the natural and the artificial. Metallic rain, generated by synchronized motors, symbolizes the fusion of these two dimensions, where a typically natural phenomenon, like rain, is transformed into something mechanized and stripped of its original organicity. The gesture subverts the dichotomy between what is natural and what is constructed, highlighting how human action and technology intervene in environmental processes, creating other geological and atmospheric realities.

In Strategies of Protection, Mari Nagem uses sections of bird nests, reorganized into complex cellular structures, to reflect on how natural protection strategies have been modified by technological interference. The sectional drawings of these nests are superimposed, forming compositions that suggest constant adaptation and movement—a metaphor for the capacity of natural systems to adjust to new conditions. The accompanying ceramic, with a painted magnet resembling a watchful eye, symbolizes the constant presence of observation and resistance. Nagem suggests that despite human intervention, nature continues to find ways to survive, incorporating the artificial into its struggle for continuity.

Finally, in the NGrams series of paintings, Mari uses data mapped by Google on the frequency of words in printed sources from the 20th century to create graphic landscapes organized as brief visual narratives. Each word is represented by a color, and its distribution over time reveals linguistic and historical patterns. By using algorithms that process and organize large volumes of information, the work manages to recreate part of the cultural landscapes of the historical contexts mapped by the database while inviting us to reflect on the relationship between human intelligence and technology, suggesting that automated data collection and analysis processes actively participate in constructing new readings of the past and present.

Calorcito challenges us to reflect: what landscapes will Earth create from technological ruins and climate destruction? Which traces of the present will survive, and what new forms of life will emerge from this scenario? Mari Nagem invites us to think beyond human boundaries, suggesting that even amid collapse, the planet will continue to transform as a geontological agent, in constant change.

Ana Roman

 

1.The work in question was created in collaboration with Thiago Hersan and will be exhibited in September at the independent space Canteiro, in São Paulo.
2.POVINELLI, Elizabeth A. “Do rocks listen?”, in: American Anthropologist. New Series, vol. XCVII, no. 3 (1995), pp. 505-518.
3.Old Man Rock, or Darri-ba Nungalinya, is a sacred rock located near the coast of Nightcliff, in the city of Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia. According to tradition, its spirit, when disturbed by human actions, can cause devastation, triggering extreme weather phenomena such as violent storms and cyclones.
4.POVINELLI, Elizabeth A. Geontologies: A Requiem to Late Liberalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 2016.
5.An expression that refers to the thought of Donna Haraway. She challenges us to “think differently” by questioning traditional divisions between nature and culture, human and non-human. She proposes abandoning the hierarchical view that places humans at the center and, instead, embracing the interdependence of species, technologies, and the planet. According to Haraway, this new way of thinking requires collaboration and co-evolution among diverse forms of life, promoting a more balanced and less exploitative coexistence in a constantly changing world. For more information: HARAWAY, Donna. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham: Duke University Press, 2016.
6.An expression used by Marisol de la Cadena in the article “Indigenous Cosmopolitics in the Andes: Conceptual Reflections beyond ‘Politics.’” In: Cultural Anthropology, vol. 25, no. 2, 2010, pp. 334-370.
7.HARAWAY, Donna. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham: Duke University Press, 2016.
8.The expression refers to Jonathan Crary’s book Terra Arrasada, in which the author discusses how late capitalism and the “internet complex”—comprising social networks, artificial intelligence, and other digital technologies—limit our existence and devastate the environment and society. For more information: CRARY, Jonathan. Terra Arrasada. São Paulo: Ubu Editora, 2022.