KWAK So Jin: Black Bird Black

KWAK So Jin, Black Bird Black, 2021, two-channel video, dimensions variable, FHD, stereo sound, 24 min 22 sec. All rights reserved by the artist.

Black Bird Black (2021) confounds visual understanding by intersecting the image of time—captured in the scattering movement of birds—and the physical way of rationalizing it. In the video, the images of a worker making photographic prints in a darkroom under a red light and that of a security guard chasing after crows overlap in time in a documentary form, creating a non-linear narrative and suggesting a new landscape. Among the four sequences, the black-and-white movements that speed across the printing process at the printshop, with the scattered crows in the sky, suggest generation and extinction, reflecting different aspects of the black birds and the color black. The video repeats in a loop with no beginning or end, hinting at each sequence to come rather than heading toward a conclusion. The red window installed alongside the video in the space works in conjunction with the red light that appears in the video, blurring the physical boundaries of space and time between the screen and the outside world. 

About the artist 

KWAK Sojin (b.1993) explores the structure of reciprocal reflection between media and the body and works with interest in the states of lack and excess that are caused by the shift from one medium to another.