The twenty-first century is made of materials that will last forever. And this promise is something we have already begun to regret. Our walls swell with expanding spray foam, held in with stainless-steel mesh and coated with paint thinner. Nonbiodegradable and chemically complex, these easily discarded products become permanent somewhere on earth. Largely petroleum-based materials give us, in Hong Kong artist Andrew Luk’s words, “a taste of an uncomfortable bile-like future,” and “art that embraces this reality is like a vaccination.” The object of “is like” is critical here, as we all continue