China

Breathing Clouds: Art, Science, and the Air We Share

This roundtable brings together artists, scientists, and environmental thinkers to explore the intersections of art, science, and policy through the lens of air and clouds, elements that are both invisible and essential, shaping history, climate change, and human experience.

Inspired by Cloud’s Memoir and Breathe, the discussion will examine air as a carrier of memory, a contested ecological and economic resource, and a medium for artistic and scientific storytelling. From artistic performances that reimagine clouds as historical and informational archives to cutting-edge atmospheric research on air pollution and new particle formation, this conversation highlights how air connects individuals, nations, and ecosystems—challenging traditional boundaries of responsibility, ownership, and governance.

Agenda

18:00 – 18:20 Registration

18:20 – 18:50 Performance (Clouds’ Memoir by Black Void)

19:00 – 20:00 Panel Discussion

  • Yixuan Cai, Artist, Curator, Founder of Black Void
  • Khalil Berro, Artist

20:00 – 21:00 Networking Reception

Speakers

  •

    Bio

    Yixuan Cai

    Artist, Curator, Founder of Black Void

    Founder for Black Void, Artist, Curator, Designer, AACYF Top 30. Graduated from Rhode Island School of Design with Dual Degree in Architecture and Fine Art(Film). Former member of MAD Architect. Her artist collective Black Void focuses on the hybrid ecology formed by nature and technology.

    Her artworks “Twin Cloud” and “Biosphere 3” has been nominated for 2024 Lumen Prize, won 10th IDEAT Vision Award and 16th IEEE PacificVis Visual Data Storytelling Golden Award. Past exhibition at the 14th National Art Exhibition, Venetian Arsenal, Guardian Art Center, Power Station of Art and etc. Featured in a documentary produced by China Media Group. She has founded the art platform Conversazione in New York and Beijing, hosted over hundreds of forums, workshops and exhibitions. Her curatorial practice has won Design Society Curator Award and Design Trust Seed Grant. She has curated the exhibition “Vibrating Clouds” (Design Society,2021) and“QiWu: Natural Footprint in Technological Vicissitude”(OCAT Institute, 2020). Research project “Post Carbon” unveils the multifaceted nature of carbon through the collaborative exchanges among artists, scientists and entrepreneurs. She also taught course “Post-Carbon Future” at Central Academy of Fine Art, building the design methodology for future renewable landscape.

  •

    Bio

    Khalil Berro

    Artist

    Khalil Berro’s work treats the world as a relational object, shaped by desire, power, and control. At the core of the Swiss-Lebanese artist’s approach lies a poetic engagement with acute locations and environmental sciences, reconfiguring and proposing new modes of perception of the non-human (nature).

    His process begins not with a concept, but with a journey, collaborations with scientists, dedicated field research in remote and precarious locations, materialized through methods that range from the highly technological to the dangerously crude. Berro’s research has led his work deep into Arctic coal mines, across chemically-cleared Indonesian palm oil fields, and atop Alpine peaks, launching rockets into clouds to seed artificial rain. Each encounter brings its own ambivalence, its own revelation about the dynamics between humanity and its habitat.

    Through film, photography, sculpture, and installation, Berro stages these tensions, making them palpable. His images disorient, proposing new ways of sensing what has always been there, challenging established environmental and cultural realities.

Artistic Performance

Clouds’ Memoir 

This work is a 20-minute performance that constructs an interplay between clouds and the audience (humanity) through in-door cloud-making, light and projection, sound, and recitative performance. It revisits the multiple meanings of clouds as a historical, biological, and informational medium. Clouds once guided ancient meteorological observations, served as celestial omens in mysticism, reflected the crimson glow of war-torn skies, loomed as the oppressive black haze of the industrial era, and became the canvas for 20th-century advertising. Ephemeral and forgetful, they bear the weight of human gazes yet never retain a single imprint.

In the era of climate change, the form of clouds grows increasingly unpredictable. They harbor the power of destruction, yet with a passing breeze, they erase all traces. Humanity strives to inscribe its existence upon the sky, but in the end, all visions, memories, and narratives of power dissipate like clouds. This performance, through aerosol clouds, shifting light and shadow, and spoken words, embodies a dialogue between individuals and clouds—one that also mirrors the fragmentation, transience, and self-destructive nature of human thought.

“The entanglement of technology and nature has forged a new hybrid ecology, where sunlight, water, wind, clouds, software systems, data, and infrastructure intertwine. New life forms born upon this environment—such as artificial intelligence and bitcoin—are challenging our definitions of life and existence, while decentralized networks are expanding “me” across countless nodes in the cloud. Here, the meanings of life, energy, and ecology are undergoing revolutionary transformations. From pixels to planets, from Earth’s atmosphere to Martian landscapes, our journey traverses scales, time, space, and sensory experiences.”

Presented by

Black Void is an art and science collective, founded and directed by Yixuan Cai , in partnership with Yuhan Xiao, Hong Yun and more members from digital media, architecture, data science and music background. Their artistic endeavors center around the hybrid ecology, interwoven by nature and technologies.
Their works decode ecological events through data and simulate natural energy flows in installations, fostering a dialogue between engineering, energy, and wilderness. They explore themes such as "cloud," "carbon," "solar," and "interstellar life." Their work has been exhibited at Venetian Arsenal, The Guardian Art Center, Power Station of Art, and more. They have been nominated for 2024 Lumen Prize Impact Award, and won 2025 IDEAT Future Award, first place in PacificVis 2023 Visual Data Storytelling and have been featured in a documentary produced by China Media Group. Past brand collaborations include L'Oréal, Tencent SSV, Audi, Genesis Motor, and etc. (www.blackvoid.xyz)

Art Exhibits

Partners

Climate Ring Shanghai