In Environmental Triage: An Experiment in Democracy and Necropolitics, CAE directly confronts its viewers with one of the many excruciatingly difficult choices in the organization of death in the Anthropocene. Given that resources for remediation of large bodies of water are limited, and the cost can be extremely high, what is the best strategy to do the most good and distribute the greatest ecological justice for the wild and for society? Do we focus on that which is most ill, or do we cut our losses and opt to preserve those bodies of water that are the healthiest? Or should we abandon any preservationist strategy, and transform the pollution problem into a technical problem (solutionism), and focus on public waterworks with better filtering and recycling systems? Harkening back to one of the great necropolitical art works, Hans Haacke’s 1970 MOMA Poll at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, CAE asks the attending public to vote on what should be done about water in Seoul and the surrounding region. By the end of the exhibition, we should have a compelling visualization of the level of consensus that exists locally of how triage in the wild, as it relates to water resources, should be organized (if at all).
