single channel video, 4:02, installation, 5.1m x 2.1m, 2021
This work captures the process of the city’s representative images becoming dust and gradually disappearing. The dust stacks and forms to assemble the city’s image again. The work unfolds like a landscape view.
When did you see the street full of people? When was it crowded?
A city loses vitality as people's activities decrease. The sound of people decreases. Everything slows down little by little and finally stops. Ultimately, the streets become empty. After people disappear, only structures stand in place. It is quiet and lonely. People give life to the city and make them exist. And they take it back. The vitality of the city moves to another city. A new city is created and removed. I share my feelings with the audience about being empty or losing movements through the disappearing image in this work.
I worked on the city's vitality in my previous work, ‘Pulse’. This work is a public art installation in Lurie Garden in March 2020 before the pandemic, using images of buildings' skylines and heartbeats. The view of the street I saw at that time was fresh. The streets were crowded with people and were colored with the green of nature. ‘Reversion to Mono’ develops ideas I explored in ‘Pulse’. The image of the city I feel now is bleak and depressing. It feels like that not only because of the landscape through the window but also emotionally. Chicago's winter is all white and calm. The epidemic makes the city even more silent.
The purpose of this work is to replace the feelings I feel while looking at the city and the streets with images, and to make the audience imagine the same feelings as me through these images.
Dust is pouring, and this is getting thicker and stronger. Dust builds up quickly. Images of several buildings are shown in panoramic views. These images are composed of the building photos in Chicago which I took and edited. Over time, these images turn into dust and dust flows away on the screen. behind the disappearing buildings. Many images are stacked and layered on screen. Buildings at the bottom of the disappearing work, flying dust, creates a cycle. These cycles are repeated. The film maintains a quiet and calm atmosphere throughout the show. There is the sound of wind from time to time.
