Aqua Paradiso

Tae-Eun Kim

〈Rectangular System 〉, 2005(reproduced in 2022).

Beam projector, computer, directional microphone, audio interface
Dimension variable

〈Black Bile〉, 2022.

Prints, extracts from chemical solution, monitor, player
Dimension variable

Commissioned by Asia Culture Center, Gwangju

Tae-Eun Kim, who presented the projects across the boundaries of different fields, including media art, film, advertisements, and performance, creates a system that reveals the mechanism of the reality by using various mediums. Rectangular System is an interactive work that visualizes the relationships between the two people who face each other. Kim deems that a quadrangle shape in a go board or a sports field shows the aspects of relationships of those who face each other or go on exchanges, and considers whether such relationships can be equal. The audience faces each other and holds a dialogue by sitting on the chairs at both sides of the long table. At this time, their dialogues are substituted for sound data and reproduced as a space where liquid floats around. The directions of the waves and shapes of floating quadrangles, which differ depending on the quantities and lengths of the sounds to each other, visualize the aspects of the relationships revealed in the dialogues.
In Black Bile, Kim borrows a scene from Melancholia, a film by Lars Von Trier, and uses it as a medium for the work. The artist breaks a scene, in which Justine, a main character, kills herself after suffering from depression and floats over water, into 24 frames per second, materializes the images after printing, and dissolves it in water. Kim devised this process as a methodology to extract melancholia, or black bile, which is an etymology of melancholy, meaning depression, and was considered a cause for depression in ancient Greece. The dissolved outcome is evaporated and scattered into air. Can it mean redemption after death? What would be the remains?