2 channel video & sound Installation,
Video A: H264,1440×180,30fps, 18′ , Video B: H264,1920×1080, 24fps, 4’02”
5.1 channel sound
Co-production work with Zai Tang (Singapore/UK)
Commission work for Busan Biennale 2020, Presented at MOCA Busan
Dormant Soil / Concrete Reflections is a co-production audio-visual installation work by Rei Hayama and the Singapore based sound artist Zai Tang and is a response to the Korean poet Kim Hyesoon’s Haeundae Texas Queen Kong. It was a commission work for Busan Biennale 2020. Under the condition of the pandemic of COVID-19, artist couldn’t travel and work together in the production process. Therefore, their approach aimed to triangulate between Hyesoon’s text, Hayama’s film and video image and Tang’s sound, from three different ports in three different countries, three different seasides, navigating towards a third space in the middle.
The video projected on the front of the installation was shot by Hayama drifted through the residential seaside area in Yokohama, captured the scenery with the light- weight camera, as an extension of her body. With impressions of Haeundae Texas Queen Kong held in mind, she recorded the discarded things on the roadside, the houses caught within cycles of construction and demolition, and the action of herself rubbing over the splinters of buildings and digging up the soil by the hand that is not holding the camera, revealing that which is beneath the concrete epidermis of the city. The other image is light and shadow, produced on 16mm film, projected directly above the viewer onto the floor. Hayama walked through the city dragging not the camera but the film itself, which was directly damaged on the film by the epidermis of the city. “Dormant Soil / Concrete Reflections” is a recurring sleep and awakening between these two different visual elements, one manipulated by human consciousness and one not.
The sound, created by Singapore-based sound artist Zai Tang, was recorded around the Singapore River. The places are swarming with the activity of capital, where money is generated and spent in abundance, however due to Covid-19 these locations remained eerily quiet and largely deserted. Zai Tang recorded ‘impulse responses’ of this space and used it for his sound making.