Aqua Paradiso

Liu Yu

〈If Narratives Become the Great Flood〉, 2020.

Dual channel screening, video installation, color, stereo, dogu model
12min. 38sec.

f Narratives Become the Great Flood begins from flood myths that exist in more than 254 ethnic groups in 84 languages. The legends of beginning, death, regeneration and the world of humans have been handed down for generations in oral or written forms, and transformed to a collective “narratives of consciousness” as time goes by. The similarities of these myths imply a possibility of simultaneous experiences that can exist in cultural differences, while providing an alternative to our knowledge and information about the experiential world as a story going beyond the limit of the reality or reasoning. In the era of troubles, including population explosion, climate change, and the possibility of the sixth extinction, we need to rearrange the relationships between humans and the natural environment before encountering a limit of the system that we have developed. What types of dialogues can we open when we make oral folk tales face contemporary media? What would the different perceptions of species from different cultures tell us with respect to the coexistence of humans and the universe? The work by Liu Yu traverses the similarities among myths, perceptions and the contemporary media to create a narrative of consciousness unique to the artist. By re-interpreting the ancient myth, the artist raises a question on the order of the world built upon knowledge and information today and beckons us to reconsider human origin.