The Cave [2004]

Artist statement:

'The cave' is a classic allegory made by ancient Greek Philosopher Plato. He used cave and cavemen as a metaphor to talk about the ambiguity between 'reality' and 'virtuality'.  Imagine you only see shadow once you born and everyone around you are as same as you. The shadow will become the only 'reality' to you, does the objects more important than the shadows then? Everyday there are some many images being produced and consumed. We read newspaper and TV and get online to 'know about the world'. On one hand we are trying to deny the realness of the images, on the other hand we produced images more quick and rapid than we ever could. Digital cameras and all sort of camera-equipped mobiles help us to generate more and more images. It seems we are documenting the 'real', however these images are creating another 'real', a more striking and eye-catching real for us. Are we actually in the cave of images created by our own?
[Click for video]

Rules of the game:

1. At first an audience will get inside the closet and the artist will lock it up, placing the key on the door of the closet. 2. Any audience who wants to get in the closet could go to unlock the closet then get inside and the closet will be locked up again. 3. The whole performance will stop when no one else is inside the closet.

Setup :

A closet with a lock is placed in front of the audiences; the interior of the closet is covered by iron nails. There is a live projection of the outside world in the closet using video projector. Outside the closet there are 2 projectors, one showing the quote of Plato's' cave and the other showing the same live video stream that the audience inside the closet could see.

 

 

 

Hamlet's cv

You can download Hamlet's cv here