Boring Billion (2026) is a 15-minute video by the Chinese filmmaker and video artist Yuyan Wang. It was commissioned by Fondazione In Between Art Film for its Canicula exhibition on the occasion of La Biennale di Venezia 2026. The piece opens with a Dantean descent into what appears to be an abandoned power plant. The footage comes from a bodycam seemingly strapped to the cameraperson’s chest. This creates a strange dichotomy. The images feel both embodied and disembodied because, apart from the occasional hand entering the frame, no people ever appear on screen. That absence of the human remains a constant throughout the video. Even when Wang uses footage of laboratory tests or robot assembly, the scientists and operators are cropped out. She zooms in on the technology until the humans disappear from view.

The technology, by contrast, becomes increasingly humanoid as the video unfolds. At first it merely mimics human movement. It then evolves into technological replicas of organs and muscles before finally taking the form of biological organisms, from dogs and birds to marine life. By the end of the film, human existence has become a distant memory. All that remains is a technological echo of biological life. Wang also places a strong emphasis on vision. The edit lingers on bionic eyes, implanted eyelashes, and other uncanny details.

The video consists entirely of found footage. The low image quality betrays its online origins. Shots of research laboratories, industrial processes, maintenance procedures and robot assembly are spliced together with a rhythm that feels as automated as their subject. The repetitions, rapid editing and absence of people make it seem as though the footage has been assembled by a technological entity itself. In essence, this is a straightforward supercut, but one that adds a performative layer to the selection and compilation of its clips. Through its formal precision and restraint, it transcends the genre, becoming a searing indictment of technofetishism.

The piece has an almost hypnotic quality, paired with a dystopian sense of irrelevance. The journey begins underground but ends far above it, in orbit around Earth. Technology appears to have freed itself from its earthly origins and now colonises space, leaving humanity behind. As a viewer, you are left feeling obsolete, surpassed by lifeless machines. That impression is sharpened by the distinctly ironic use of DeBarge’s saccharine love song All This Love on the soundtrack.