We speak with Gary Zhexi Zhang concerning the nature of financial forecasting, calendar systems, catastrophe modelling, and financial worlding.

Gary Zhexi Zhang is an artist and writer. His current projects explore financial fictions, weird temporalities and catastrophe. A recent body of work, Cycle 25, documented events that shape the boundaries between speculative belief and the material world, like natural disasters, scam nations and cosmic economies. As a researcher, he has held fellowships at the Berggruen Institute in L.A. and Sakiya – Art Science Agriculture in Ramallah. He is a co-founder of design studio Foreign Objects, which was incubated at NEW INC and received the Mozilla Creative Media Award. He has written for various magazines and journals, taught art and design classes at Goldsmith’s and Parsons, and sometimes works as a “strategist”. Books and chapters include Against Reduction: Designing a Human Future with Machines (MIT Press, 2021) and Catastrophe Time! (Strange Attractor Press, forthcoming)