Installation view of 《AFTER FLOW》 © ONDREAM Society

Artist Note

Recently, the experience of encountering sudden torrential downpours has become more frequent. It is said that a single burst of guerrilla rain releases approximately 18,000 tons of water in an instant. This sheer volume reminds me of the climate crisis that we momentarily forget.

We often assume that we control water in our daily lives and tend to overlook its power, yet when it exerts an unexpected influence within human territory, we become profoundly aware of it. From quietly infiltrating private human spaces to disrupting entire urban systems, water moves constantly and creates wide-ranging effects.

Through circulation, it comes into contact with the nonhumans that exist within the city—those previously outside the scope of human perception—and forms new networks of relation. As a result, nonhuman entities hidden in the underground world surge like a flood, and strange phenomena emerge in which distinct beings—once thought permanently separated—collide with one another.

Installation view of 《AFTER FLOW》 © ONDREAM Society

The magical spectacle created by the convergence of water and urban nonhumans manifests in various forms depending on scale.

A massive volume of water exerts a strong influence in a short period of time and disappears rapidly. It mixes natural and artificial materials into a single mass, uproots plants underground and pulls them up to the surface.

It forces accumulated waste in the sewer systems to flow backward, dismantles concrete, and drags out the soil from within, blurring the boundary between aboveground and underground. Nonhumans unable to resist the force of water are displaced from their original positions or forcibly redirected from their former paths.

Installation view of 《AFTER FLOW》 © ONDREAM Society

A small amount of water enters stealthily, penetrating the bodies of nonhumans to change their material quality or leaving traces on their exterior. It infiltrates through gaps in buildings and seeps into the interior of objects in the space. It floats around as vapor and, upon contact with transparent entities such as mold or glass, renders them opaque.

Nonhumans displaced by water’s force are newly reconstructed as if they have shifted into another dimension. Within this reconfigured world, they acquire new qualities and become integrated into expanded networks. Freed from the human framework of “being within order,” they may in turn cross into human territory and exert strange and mysterious forms of influence—even if only temporarily.

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