Unseen I/II

Unseen I, 2018

11 min 47 sec
Two channel audio video, artist-made wearable device, drawings, artist essay
installation dimension variable

The video has been produced by the artist-made device which takes pictures every time the eyes blink. It was shot on the 31th of May in Chengdu, China from 11:30 AM to 10:15 PM throughout 42.5km. Following the metro line No.1 the artist walked north bound from first station(South) to the last station(North) so that it reflects the cityscapes. The audio track was fabricated from the recording materials from the performance.

Unseen II, 2018

33 min 04 sec
Two channel audio video, artist-made wearable device, drawings, artist essay
installation dimension variable

The video has been produced by the artist-made device which takes pictures every time the eyes blink. It was shot for a 24-hours on the 15th of June to 16th of June in Chengdu, China. The artist made dialog with locals and got an recommendation from them for the next destination. The audio track was fabricated from the recording materials from the performance.

from the artist’s note(essay) :

How do I memorise the seen, what I am missing while I am looking at something?

Although I am seeing, I miss what I am looking at. So every time I try to look at something again, it disappears every time my eye blinks. I only collected fragments during a day while walking around the whole city. The shops, parks, people and cars, so many of these I passed and nothing was left from my sight. I only remember that I walked alone through huge concrete structures, steel-glass buildings, unfamiliar advertisements, with characters that I can’t read.

The city’s structure reflects its own culture and human experiences, which we as passers by are not aware of, but these images become a very trivial part of daily-life. These small elements are always missed, erased when we blink and we pretend that nothing is missed. Unknown people, shops and old ruins. Only the horizontal open space of the street, simply remind me of someone or somewhere and then all these vanish quickly in the blink of an eye. As the space emerges, it blends with past and future as others memories. So the present is easily forgotten or actually it never existed neither has been seen by our eyes, it has been constructed only with our discrete view of time.

When Marco Polo passed through what did he see? Now his eyes have been permanently closed for more than 700 years but what happens when my eyes are closed? I never have seen these images with my eyes but also these remind me of experiences. Why did I blink more or less, at certain time, I have no idea. I do not remember or recognize the strangers who passed me, these become alive all of sudden, producing its own space and time on its own speed. While I was walking through the city I crossed it from South to North. I walked along the streets above of the city's first subway line, which was planned during republic time of China but also there were old streets, streets recently built or streets under construction. It starts with a small dune, lawns, lakes, high skyscraper buildings, a lot of apartment complexes, street stalls, small shops, restaurants, highways, shopping malls, squares, sheds, ruins and ends with highways again.

These fragments are entangled and form a linear panoramic scene, introducing us to a parallel space where technology becomes a medium to capture the society of the time.