Ambitious and contrived, Liu Chuang’s Lithium Lake and Island of Polyphony (2023) is a 56-minute, three-channel video that brings together sci-fi, ethnomusicology, and material culture to forge a fictional journey. Interspersed with a plethora of footage, from lithium mining in Bolivia, photos of historical China, polyphonic singing by an Asian ethnic group in dense foliage, to an animated Chinese painting of bestiaries, the video evokes the artist’s indiscriminate fascination with, and inspection of, human civilization throughout historical periods.