Nicholas Mangan

A World Undone [Protolith]

Executed in 2012, A World Undone revolves around a single, metaphorically rich substance, drawing on geological research into an ancient mineral, Zircon, unearthed in remote Western Australia. These rocks are now studied, like a time capsule, revealing intriguing clues about the state of the planet more than 4 billion years ago. Nicholas Mangan procured a sample of the material and reduced it to a fine dust that he then filmed, in flux, with a high-speed video camera. Though drawing on ‘hard’ science and rooted in empirical techniques, the piece explores the aesthetic, philosophical, and even mythological potential of cutting-edge geophysical research.