I Yen Chen

Walking in the dark woods, with some senses blocked and others enhanced, you are your own guide.

With a limited light source, you are about to rediscover.

 

Artists Dong Liu and I-Yen Chen create a “natural space” inside a castle building. Visitors are invited to enter the completely dark space with a limited light source in hand to discover the space. A sound device with a light sensor is installed in each sculpture. Once the sensor detects the light, the alarm will chime. Through this small tour within the space and with limited and controlled senses, Liu and Chen want to trigger the audience to rethink the relationship between humans and their surroundings.

 

The installation is a metaphor of human-nature relations. Nature has its own quietness and balance before humans enter. Since the end of their hunter-gatherer experience, humans have exiled themselves from nature. To this day, we hold a rather subject-object relation with our surroundings. But is it ever possible to completely detach ourselves from nature? This installation offers visitors a chance to trigger “nature.” Rediscovering the existence of sound with light, is also to recall our touch on nature. On the other hand, being exposed to sound, at once feeling intimidated yet staying alert, visitors are reminded once again that we are forever part of the narrative that we call nature.

 

This work is also a reflection on the Anthropocene. It is not to criticize contemporary human-nature relations, neither to imitate nor recreate the natural world. It is to, through rediscovering sound, echo our current position.