Chang Hanna, New Ecosystem, 2021, Installation with collected plastic pieces, fish tanks, bubble generator, lights, sand, dimensions variable, Installation view of 《Reclamation, New Rocks, Stray Dogs, Birds, and Acoustics of the Garden》 (Incheon Art Platform, 2021) ©Chang Hanna

When I was young and went to the seaside, I preferred walking along the shore and picking up pretty, unusual stones rather than entering the water. On some days, I would discover an especially smooth, shiny green stone among the rough-looking rocks. When I proudly brought such finds home as if I had discovered gemstones, what awaited me was my parents’ scolding.

They were not gemstones at all, but discarded glass bottles that had been broken down and worn smooth by waves and weathering, eventually turning into pebble-like forms. Later, I learned that these are called sea glass. From that point on, whenever it became clear that what I had found was not nature itself but an artificial object bearing the appearance of nature, I felt a strange discomfort, and such objects were naturally excluded from my collection.

Chang Hanna’s approach, however, is the opposite. She collects and exhibits only “strange stones.” At first glance, these “strange stones” resemble ordinary rocks, but upon closer inspection they turn out to be made of plastic. Some appear to be large rocks riddled with holes, yet feel unexpectedly light when lifted—they are made of Styrofoam. Born from human hands, these objects arrived at the sea through various circumstances and, after long periods of weathering in nature, hardened into forms that seem truly part of the natural environment. The artist has given these “strange stones” the name “New Rock.”

Chang Hanna explains that her Research on New Rock began when she happened upon a stone-shaped piece of Styrofoam on a beach. From 2017 onward, she spent approximately four years traveling to coastlines across the country to collect New Rock specimens, and in July 2020, she presented their existence to the public at Studio Square in Suwon. In the exhibition 《Reclamation, New Rocks, Stray Dogs, Birds, and Acoustics of the Garden》, held at Incheon Art Platform from May 21 to July 25 this year, she installed New Rock pieces inside water tanks, allowing viewers to observe firsthand the processes of change that occur as water and New Rock interact.

Titled New Ecosystem, the work quite literally gave rise to a “new ecosystem” during the exhibition period: sprouts emerged from the Styrofoam, mosquito larvae laid eggs, and life unfolded upon New Rock. Some of the New Rock specimens in this piece were collected with marine life already coexisting on them; their plastic surfaces are densely covered with barnacles. These New Rocks have become part of what is known as the “plastisphere”—a term referring to plastic waste discarded into nature that, over long periods of time, becomes an ecological habitat for marine organisms.

Chang Hanna, New Rock Specimen 2017-2021, 2021 ©Chang Hanna

The forms of New Rock do not end there. Although not included among the artist’s collected specimens, there are also instances in which New Rock has itself become a geological layer. In an interview video with SBS News, Chang Hanna recalls a bizarre scene she encountered while collecting New Rock: coastal plants taking root and growing upon Styrofoam, using it as their geological substrate. The boundary between the artificial and the natural is steadily disappearing.

Many scholars addressing the current climate crisis assert that humanity is living in a geological epoch known as the Anthropocene. The term “Anthropocene,” first proposed by Dutch chemist Paul Crutzen, combines the words anthropos (human) and cene (epoch). Since the emergence of humanity, the Earth’s climate and ecosystems have undergone fundamental changes, and from a geological perspective, this marks the advent of a new era.

Scholars express concern that a significant portion of the geological strata left behind by humans will be covered in plastic. Chang Hanna’s New Rock can be seen as a miniature version of the Anthropocene. The entanglement of non-decomposable artificial materials with nature starkly reveals the impact humans have had on the planet. For this reason, these small stones can feel like ominous harbingers of human extinction. But is it possible to interpret New Rock differently?

Since the 2000s, Western social sciences have proposed “New Materialism” as a way of addressing the crisis of the Anthropocene. New Materialism seeks to reflect upon and overcome rigid binary oppositions such as culture/nature and human/non-human. Culture and nature are not separate entities; rather, they exert profound influence upon one another and exist along a continuous spectrum. As such, responsibility toward nature and non-human entities must be shared. This line of thinking offers clues as to how we might approach encounters with hybrid entities such as New Rock.

From this perspective, Chang Hanna’s New Rock is not only a symbol of the Anthropocene, but also a catalyst for New Materialist discourse aimed at addressing it. The artist herself states that her work is not intended to serve an educational purpose or convey some grand moral value. Rather, her goal is to show that these phenomena are already occurring, and to share the information she has uncovered. She believes that making invisible processes visible can, in itself, generate a wide range of possibilities.

Currently, Chang Hanna’s work New Rock Specimen 2017–2021 is on view at 《Typojanchi 2021: Turtle and Crane》, held at Culture Station Seoul 284. Displayed on pedestals, the New Rock forms appear both unfamiliar and familiar—grotesque, yet possessing a certain sculptural beauty. Apart from the message New Rock conveys, these formal qualities allow it to be experienced as an artwork. Viewers encountering the piece thus experience both its aesthetic allure and the sense of unease embedded within it.

Recently, the Seoul Museum of Art presented 《Climate Museum: The Life of Our Home》(June 8–August 8, 2021), while the Busan Museum of Contemporary Art staged 《Sustainable Museum: Art and Environment》(May 4–September 22, 2021). Not only Chang Hanna, but the art world as a whole appears to be grappling with the conventional practice of continuously producing and presenting “new” things. One hopes that this tendency will not remain merely a curatorial trend, but instead become an opportunity to search for genuinely “new possibilities.”

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