Exhibition poster of 《Deep in the Forking Tanks》

For some people, perceptions of an object are stimulated in a different way, leaving them in a world that is not the reality. They experience an odd phenomenon where the cracks leading to the outside world keep narrowing and disappearing. Something keeps digging in between the different pixels and frames that serve as new cracks in this world, which are continually being filled back up. Before, the cracks were filled at a fast rate; at some point, it began to approach real-time, and now it has gone beyond real-time to reach the future. 〈Deep in the Forking Tanks〉, the new video that provides the title for this exhibition, has artist Heecheon Kim meeting with divers and venturing down deep into the water. Before entering the water, he goes into a flotation tank to experience a simulated dive. Also known as a “sensory deprivation tank,” it is quite literally capable of cutting off a sense of sight, hearing, and smell. Inside one of these tanks, a person loses the sensations of their body and is capable of focusing fully on their mind. But as the training goes on, one starts to become confused at whether they are in a simulation or actually diving. While they are being drawn into a state in which their consciousness of physical reality is unclear, another sensory stimulation from the tank itself gains momentum.

As he constructs his narratives in the video medium, Heecheon Kim applies his patterns and submits them to a testing process. First, he records an actual situation with documentary-like footage. This record is used as the “actual” material to support his hypothesis. The artist actively applies digital technology to his footage – GPS, VR, face swapping, games, and so forth – which becomes a set of tools for achieving somehow “unreal” layers within a real situation. In his artistic practice, these digital applications are one of his primary visual rhetorics and serve as media to stimulate different perceptions of reality. Through these methods, Kim presents us with an unusual situation in which no distinction are drawn between the virtual perceptions and reality that human beings are conscious of – where the boundaries between them disappear and reappear.

Further information:
http://artsonje.org/en/tank/