Where Clouds Once Formed

This film traces Arizona’s desert as it is reshaped into a hub for data centres and semiconductor manufacturing. Moving through altered waterways, the film exposes tensions between technoutopian visions and drought-stricken ecologies. Guided by offscreen voices and Tohono O’odham poet Ofelia Zepeda’s ‘Cloud Song’, ancestral knowledge counters the rise of industrial ‘cloud’ infrastructures.

Su Yu Hsin: ‘This is the second chapter of a trilogy tracing the global expansion of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), from Hsinchu to Phoenix. As TSMC produces more than 90% of the world’s most advanced chips and underpins the AI industry, the film seeks to uncover the hidden environmental debts embedded in its supply chain, entangled with resource extraction in arid regions. Growing up in Taiwan, I reflect on a society whose infrastructures quietly sustain this industry while environmental degradation is eclipsed by narratives of security and economic growth. Filmed in Arizona, the work follows the altered course of the Salt River — from dams to data centres — asking what it means to build a water-intensive industry in drought-stricken land. Guided by offscreen voices and Ofelia Zepeda’s “Cloud Song”, the film reveals the fracture between Technoutopian promise and ecological reality.’