Rindon Johnson: Best Synthetic Answer

Rockbund Art Museum (RAM) is excited to present Best Synthetic Answer, an experimental solo exhibition by American artist and poet Rindon Johnson. Marking the artist’s most comprehensive institutional presentation in the Asia Pacific to date, this extensive seven-month, ever-evolving project examines the fluid expanses of the Pacific Ocean—a vast body of water that intricately connects the US and China.

Emerging from a series of discussions between Johnson and RAM artistic director X Zhu-Nowell, the exhibition navigates the complex geographies of the Pacific, interrogating traditional notions of borders, fixed territory, states, and ecocide. The Pacific is full of commerce: its floor is divided up for mining, freight lanes crisscross its expanse, and commercial fishing extends across it. To maintain the current level of exploitation of the earth’s resources, the Pacific is crucial to securing a capitalist future. Through this exhibition, Johnson asks: “How does a Black American, raised on the edge of the Pacific, move through the ocean to reach Shanghai? Apart from obvious forms of resource extraction as forms of exploitation, on what levels am I also responsible for this destruction? As a consuming human on this earth? As an American citizen? As a Black person? As my parents’ only son? What seismic shifts will come from the collapse of so many in-concert ecosystems?  Besides, ultimately, what does anyone gain from exploitation of this magnitude? How do I witness this ocean’s past, present, and future? How do I attempt to atone for the United States’ historical, current, and impending destruction and exploitation of the Pacific Ocean and the people who call it home? How do I name all of that? How to swim through it? How big is the Pacific Ocean, really? Nothing is so big it cannot be measured, right?”

The heart of Best Synthetic Answer is a newly commissioned video installation, Best Synthetic Answer #1: Crossing…, that simulates a real-time journey from Johnson’s birthplace—on the unceded territories of the Ohlone peoples in San Francisco—to Shanghai, China. Spanning seven months, Johnson”s avatar—the “main character” of this work—swims in real time across the Pacific Ocean, offering an immersive yet temporally unwieldy experience that attempts (and ultimately fails) to describe the immensity and multidimensionality of the Pacific specifically by following the wake of the United States’ destructive interventions.

In Best Synthetic Answer #1: Crossing…, several AI models are used to ostensibly guess the live condition of the Pacific Ocean: real-time weather data and existing freely available oceanic weather datasets to generate second-for-second theoretically “live” weather condition of the Pacific. The exhibition and its central work’s title, Best Synthetic Answer, references the outputs of large language models—like ChatGPT—which are designed to generate the optimal (best) response to any query; their responses are considered synthetic because, at least in their technological definition, they are not considered real. In this work, the artist asks, what is real, and what does it become so?

As a “language-based” artist and poet, Johnson also makes paintings, speculative animations, sculptures, livestreams, videos, and stained glass installations. In addition to Best Synthetic Answer #1: Crossing…, the exhibition will include 18 new works showing the full range of his practice installed across five museum floors. Rotating in and out of the exhibition through the seven months, all of these new works are fundamentally time-based; within them, Johnson inscribes time across what he considers living objects, raising poignant questions about ownership, freedom, autonomy, exploitation, value, and waste.

This exhibition invites viewers to focus on how art objects interact with the experience of being in the space of the real world and in real-time. In a place where competition for land, redrawing borders, and occupations persist, Johnson proposes a divergent way of thinking about time as a layered depth—overlaid yet constantly eroding, always folding in on itself, circling back and loafing forward.

Each day and every second, Johnson’s avatar navigates a hyper specific pre-determined route across the Pacific, following the hubris of the nation of his birth, the United States. Every location his avatar passes through bears the marks of places the U.S. has sought to destroy, alter, or exploit, both land and people. Moving through diverse oceanic zones, the only beings Johnson encounters as he swims are the multifaceted forms of plastic debris, remnants of what he and his fellow humans have allowed to spill into the Pacific. Through Best Synthetic Answer, Johnson invites us to perceive the Pacific not merely as a known entity but as an ever-evolving series of flows and folds, waves, and depths where the artificial and real converge.

Curated by X Zhu-Nowell, Rindon Johnson: Best Synthetic Answer is part of RAM’s broader research initiative, “Complex Geographies: Into the Pacific.” The exhibition’s accompanying public program, Wan Hai Hotel (Around the Sea Hotel), inspired by Fijian-Tongan scholar Epeli Hauʻofa, encourages a rethinking of Shanghai from a “seascape epistemology” perspective. This series invites scholars, artists, performers, and musicians from the “sea of islands” to engage in activities, including performances, lectures, conferences, and workshops. As this crossing unfolds, we invite audiences to join us in experiencing and contributing to the myriad encounters of this extensive voyage. 

International press
Sarah Greenberg, Evergreen Arts: sgreenberg@evergreen-arts.com. For images: ppanagopoulos@evergreen-arts.com.

Chinese press
Natalie Niu, Communication Manager, Rockbund Art Museum. natalie.niu@rockbundartmuseum.org.