Abstract

This research explores the question of how one might re-establish a relationship with the world when the body and consciousness become disconnected from one another.

River is not a representation of a natural river or an image of flow. Rather, it is an ongoing artistic investigation into a particular condition of existence. The work originates from my long-term personal experience of the relationship between body, consciousness, and reality: while the body remains situated within reality, consciousness continually drifts outward, unable to be fully held by reality or expressed through language.

Through a prolonged process of image-making, I gradually became aware that the images I had unconsciously recorded, initially appearing as independent fragments, were not isolated at all. Instead, they were beginning to form a larger relational structure—one that I came to call the “river.”

This research proposes that the river is neither an object nor simply a metaphor for movement, but a continuously emerging relational structure. It comes into being through the ongoing encounters between the body, the self, perception, and reality. It is also a process through which consciousness continually moves away from reality and returns to it.

Moving images, sound, and spatial elements together construct this generative relationship. The exhibition therefore ceases to be merely an object of observation and instead becomes a site where the body of the viewer can begin to re-establish its relationship with the world.

Introduction

Beginning with the Disjunction Between Body and Consciousness

River begins with a question that has remained with me for a long time:

How does a person re-establish a relationship with the world when body and consciousness become disconnected?

For a long time, I have experienced a difficult-to-name condition: the body remains within reality, while consciousness continually drifts elsewhere. My body is able to live, study, and act within the world, yet another part of me continues to move beyond what the body can contain. Sensations, emotions, intuitions, memories, and experiences that cannot easily be named often enter the world more quickly than the body can follow, and leave it just as quickly.

This project therefore emerged from my long-standing experience of “the flow of consciousness.” I often feel that my mental state resembles a continuously moving river, or an infinitely extending network—an ever-forming and ever-dissolving structure of consciousness. At times, my consciousness seems to remain in a state of rapid transformation and floating, while my body and reality are unable to fully receive or contain it.

If my scattered fragments of the self represent a form of disconnection from reality, then the river becomes what reconnects body, consciousness, and world. I wanted the river to allow me to move again—to bring those dispersed parts back into flow, and to allow the body to begin re-entering reality.

At first, I believed this was an experience particular to me. Yet through the process of making, I gradually realised that it was not necessarily a unique psychological condition, but something that may exist within the very process through which human beings relate to the world.

What I am investigating is not simply why contemporary people become ungrounded within an informational, mobile, and rapidly changing society. Nor am I asking why modernity makes people feel as though they are floating.

Rather, I am interested in a more fundamental condition: when consciousness encounters the world, a state of flow that cannot be completely named is continuously generated.

The informatization, acceleration, and fluidity of contemporary society may amplify this condition, but they are not its origin. The river does not emerge because of modernity. Modernity simply makes an already existing condition more visible.

The river is therefore not a product of a particular historical moment, but an existential structure that extends across different times and individual experiences. It is a river within the larger river of time—one that never completely stops, but continually changes.

Consciousness does not exist as a completely independent and enclosed structure. It needs to continually enter reality through the body and remain in contact with the external world in order to continuously generate itself. When this relationship is interrupted for an extended period, consciousness begins to fold inward, repeating and circulating within itself until it gradually loses its coordinates of existence.

When the body can no longer carry consciousness, one does not simply leave reality. Instead, one gradually loses one’s position within the world.

This condition is not static. It is an ongoing process of transformation.

As Heraclitus proposed, one cannot step into the same river twice. Existence itself is always in the process of becoming and changing. I therefore came to realise that what I was actually trying to understand was not a fixed psychological condition, but this continuous process of becoming, changing, and drifting.

This is where the research of River began.

Chapter One

From Floating Consciousness to the Emergence of the River

When I first began making moving images, I did not know why I was filming.

Almost all of these videos emerged from an unconscious act. I continuously recorded wind moving through trees, reflections on water, the sky, crowds, buildings, windows, plants, noise, and countless accidental moments from everyday life. There was no predetermined subject, narrative, or intention for these images to become part of a work.

At that time, I simply kept filming.

It was only later, when I returned to these images, that I gradually realised they were not records of natural landscapes. They were records of a continuously drifting mode of perception.

The images felt more like fragments of consciousness scattered across different moments in time.

Each video corresponded to a particular period of my life. They existed independently, without sequence, beginning, or end, yet together they formed my constantly changing experience of living.

I began to understand these videos not as materials, but as traces left behind by different stages of the self.

Within River, therefore, video does not represent reality itself. It comes closer to representing a state of consciousness. The images are not records of events, but residues left behind after perception passes through reality.

At the same time, I gradually became aware of something else.

When I was filming, it was not actually my body that was moving.

The images were constantly in motion while my body remained still.

The camera moved. The landscape changed. Light shifted. Wind travelled through the frame. Yet I remained there, watching everything happen.

I began to recognise a particularly clear relationship:

The body was relatively still, while consciousness remained in constant motion.

I increasingly felt that my consciousness was always moving faster than my body.

It continually travelled toward unknown places, producing new sensations, experiences, and questions, while the body remained behind, moving slowly in its wake.

This experience is not a value judgement in which consciousness is superior to the body. Rather, it resembles a temporal difference between different dimensions of experience.

The body belongs to reality.

Consciousness, however, continually moves beyond it.

It is always attempting to reach somewhere the body has not yet arrived.

Therefore, River initially did not concern a state in which the body had already established a relationship with the world. It began with the floating condition produced when the body was not yet able to contain consciousness.

I began to ask:

Why does consciousness continually drift?

Why do these images continually fragment?

I gradually realised that when one’s actual experiences remain unreceived by reality for an extended period of time, consciousness begins to drift outward.

The mind retreats inward.

The relationship between body and world begins to weaken.

Experiences that cannot enter reality do not simply disappear. They continue to exist in another form.

They become floating fragments.

These fragments were precisely the images I continued to record.

Yet while repeatedly organising these videos, I discovered something more important.

Although the videos were independent, there was always a difficult-to-explain relationship between them.

They had no narrative connection.

No chronological order.

No causal structure.

And yet, whenever I added a new image, the existing fragments seemed to begin responding to one another.

A new relationship slowly began to emerge.

It was then that I realised for the first time:

The river had always been there.

It had not been created later.

I had simply become aware of it.

The emergence of River, therefore, was not the invention of a new concept. It was a new recognition of the way I existed.

The river did not begin flowing because I began making art.

Rather, it had always accompanied me.

I simply had not yet been able to perceive it.

Looking back, I can now understand my entire creative process differently.

At first, it was a stagnant, chaotic, almost decaying river.

Consciousness drifted without direction.

The body could not fully enter reality.

The self continually dispersed outward.

Artistic practice gradually became a way of returning to reality.

Every act of filming, every act of viewing, and every act of organising images was not simply an attempt to complete a work. It was a process of continuously rebuilding the relationship between body and reality.

I began to understand that the river is not the result of connection after connection has already been established.

The river is the state in which connection is beginning to emerge.

River therefore does not describe a completed world, but a world that remains continuously in the process of becoming.

It is about floating, but also returning.

About rupture, but also connection.

More importantly, it remains open.

I do not want River to become a completely finished work.

Because a river does not stop.

Just as life does not stop becoming, I will continue to record new images, incorporate new experiences, and reinterpret fragments left behind from the past.

River therefore has no true endpoint.

It remains unfinished.

It is both a work of art and an ongoing process of living.

Chapter Two

The River: A Generative Relational Structure

At the beginning of the project, I understood the river primarily as a metaphor for “flow.” As the work developed, however, I gradually realised that what I was actually investigating was neither the river itself nor the physical movement of water, but a structure of existence that continuously emerges through the encounters between people, bodies, consciousness, and reality.

River is therefore not a work about a natural landscape, nor does it simply use the river to symbolise life or time.

The river is not an object, but a relationship.
It is not a fixed form, but a continuous process of becoming.

I understand human existence not as a stable and enclosed structure, but as something continuously generated through relationships with the world.

There are no absolutely clear boundaries between body, consciousness, perception, and reality. They remain in a dynamic relationship in which each continuously affects and transforms the others.

The river emerges within this relationship.

It is generated through the continuous contact between the self, body, perception, and reality.

I am therefore not attempting to “describe a river.” Instead, through the idea of the river, I attempt to reconsider how existence comes into being.

In its initial stage, the river appears as a state of floating.

When the body cannot contain consciousness, and lived experience cannot enter reality, consciousness begins to drift outward. Sensations that cannot become language, experiences that cannot enter social structures, do not disappear. They continue to exist in another form.

The images scattered across different times and places are traces left by this floating state.

Yet floating is not the river itself. It is only one stage through which the river first becomes visible.

Through continuously filming, viewing, and organising these images, I gradually realised that relationships were beginning to form between them. Experiences from different times began to intersect, reorganise, and generate new meanings.

The river emerged from this process.

The river is therefore not the result of connection after it has been completed.

It is the state in which connection is taking place.

It contains both the movement of consciousness away from reality and the return of the body to reality.

It is both dispersion and reconnection.

Both drifting and return.

It is always becoming.

For this reason, River is not asking why contemporary society makes people float.

The information flows, accelerated rhythms, and fragmented experiences of contemporary life may intensify this condition, but they are not its cause.

The river already exists.

It exists in every moment in which a person encounters the world.

It exists in the disjunction between body and consciousness.

It exists in the gaps where language cannot completely reach experience.

It exists in the process through which the self continuously forms, dissolves, and reconstructs itself.

The river is therefore not a product of modernity, but an existential structure extending across different individual experiences and historical periods.

It continues to flow.

Chapter Three

When Image, Sound, and Space Become Structures of Perception

If the river is a relational process of becoming, then the moving image, sound, and exhibition space within the work are no longer simply mediums for expressing content. Together, they construct the conditions through which the river can occur.

River therefore does not adopt a linear narrative structure.

Each image originates from an unconscious act of filming at a different moment in time. There is no explicit chronology or causal relationship between them. They exist as fragments of consciousness scattered across different stages of experience, continuously entering the work.

These images do not record natural landscapes.

They record traces of perception as consciousness passes through reality.

Wind moving through leaves, reflections on water, plants, crowds, windows, skies, buildings, noise—these seemingly ordinary phenomena are not objective subjects to me. They are experiences generated through brief encounters between consciousness and reality.

The image therefore does not represent reality.

It comes closer to representing the movement of the self.

Correspondingly, the screen can be understood as a body.

The body possesses boundaries, while consciousness continually attempts to move beyond them.

The images remain in motion while the screens remain relatively still.

The tension between absolute movement and relative stillness becomes another central question within the work.

However, moving image alone could not fully articulate this relationship.

It was sound that ultimately led me to reconsider the structure of the work.

While studying Shirin Neshat’s Turbulent, I began to understand that sound does not merely serve narrative or emotional expression. It can also become an experience that cannot be fully carried by language.

In Turbulent, the woman’s final vocalisation is not language. It exists somewhere between breathing, crying, and singing. It cannot be translated, yet it reaches the body more directly than language can.

This led me to reconsider sound within my own work.

If moving image makes the flow of consciousness visible, then sound becomes the trace left when the self attempts to be heard.

Yet the self cannot directly become language.

It can only appear in a form that approaches language while remaining outside it.

Sound is not expression.

It is the vibration produced when flow passes through the body.

When consciousness encounters reality, when perception becomes too complex to enter language, it may overflow as sound.

This sound is not the residue of a failed language.

It is a vibration left by existence itself.

Therefore, the sounds used in River do not belong entirely to me.

Nor do they belong entirely to the external world.

They emerge through my continuous contact with reality.

They come from both within the body and from the surrounding space: breathing, wind, water, as well as cities, crowds, machines, and accidental noise.

Together they form a perceptual field between body and reality.

Sound therefore becomes the vibration of the river itself.

At the same time, I began to reconsider space.

The exhibition space is not a container in which the work is placed after it has been created.

It is an essential part of the conditions through which the river continues to emerge.

The exhibition therefore does not begin with an already formed river.

Instead, it begins from a condition in which relationships have not yet been established.

When viewers enter the space, they first encounter a collection of dispersed images.

The images are projected onto an industrial grid, without a fixed viewing order or a single correct position from which to see the work.

The industrial grid is not simply a symbolic representation of a “network.”

It is closer to an open spatial structure.

It possesses order while remaining permeable; it divides space while allowing relationships to pass through it.

It is therefore a carrier of relational emergence rather than a fixed meaning in itself.

Some images are contained within individual grid units, while others cross their boundaries and overlap multiple structures.

This is not merely a formal decision.

It continually disrupts the boundaries of the image, allowing it to remain simultaneously constrained by the structure of the body and capable of moving beyond it.

A suspended screen at the centre of the space performs another function.

The dispersed images above resemble fragments of consciousness continually drifting, while the single continuous image at the centre creates a temporary point of concentration for the viewer.

It is not an answer.

It is only a temporary point at which the river gathers as it passes through the body.

The viewer must therefore move.

There is no single fixed position from which the entire work can be understood.

The body walks, pauses, looks back, and watches again.

As the body moves, the relationships between fragments continually change.

The river is therefore not simply viewed.

It emerges through the act of viewing.

The exhibition space ultimately becomes a site in which relationships continuously form, rather than an object waiting to be observed.

Conclusion

A River That Remains Forever Unfinished

Ultimately, River is not about how to complete a work of art.

It is about how to understand a mode of existence that remains continuously in the process of becoming.

Throughout this research, I gradually realised that the river is not simply the subject of the work.

It is the way in which the work itself comes into being.

It accompanies every act of filming, every moment in which the body enters reality, every moment in which consciousness moves away from reality, and every return to images left behind in the past.

The river therefore has no definitive beginning.

Nor does it have an end.

I will continue to record new images and incorporate new experiences. As my bodily and mental states change, and as my relationship with reality changes, the river will continue to transform its form.

It remains open.

It remains in motion.

It remains unfinished.

River is therefore not a project about a river.

It proposes another way of understanding existence:

human existence is not a completed state, but something continuously generated through encounters between body, consciousness, and the world.

The river is therefore neither a natural object nor simply a metaphor.

It is a relational structure that continually occurs between the self and reality.

It exists within the gaps between experiences that have not yet been named by language or fully defined by systems of order. It also exists within every moment in which a person re-establishes a relationship with the world.

Artistic practice does not seek to provide these experiences with a final answer.

Instead, through the continual acts of filming, looking, listening, and walking, it allows the relationship itself to continue occurring.

River is therefore not a completed work.

It is a river that is still flowing.

Theoretical Framework

I. The Theory of the River

If Heraclitus’s statement that “one cannot step into the same river twice” describes the logic of becoming, then my research asks:

What is the perceptual form of becoming?

Existence is not only a question of whether something exists, but also of in what mode it exists.

I propose a morphological understanding of existence: existence is not a stable entity or predetermined state, but an ongoing process of becoming and flowing.

Rather than following an ontological approach that asks “what is it?”, I am more interested in the question of “how does it become?”

Within this framework, existence can be understood as a relational and fluid structure, generated through continuous interactions between the self, the body, and the world.

The consciousness and perception of the individual constitute an internal flow, while the external world forms another flow through its own constant changes and instability.

When these two flows encounter one another at the level of experience, a dynamic process of becoming is activated.

Existence does not precede this process.

It is continuously generated and reorganised through it.

Existence is therefore not a fixed essence, but a fluid modality.

It has no stable boundaries, nor does it possess a single beginning or endpoint. It unfolds through continuous encounters, displacements, resonances, and transformations.

The “self” is no longer an enclosed subject, but a temporary condensation within this flow.

In this sense, the river is no longer merely a metaphor.

It becomes a methodology.

It points toward a fundamental structure of existence: a state of flow continuously generated through relationships.

Existence is not an entity.

It is a fluid modality, generated through the relationship between the self and the world and continuously constituted through their encounters and vibrations.

II. The Theory of Sound

Introduction

During the making of River, I gradually realised that moving image alone could not fully carry the experience I was attempting to explore.

The work initially emerged from a persistent sense of floating: the body remained within reality while consciousness, perception, and emotion continually moved outward.

Moving images could record the visible traces left behind when this drifting passed through reality, yet they could not fully reach another, more hidden layer of experience—those sensations that had already begun to occur but had not yet become language.

I therefore began to reconsider the position of sound within the work.

Is sound merely an extension of the moving image?

Or does sound itself become another generative form of existence when consciousness encounters reality?

This question led me to understand that sound is neither simply a narrative tool nor an emotional device.

It comes closer to a state that has not yet entered the linguistic system—a perceptual process continuously generated between body, consciousness, and world.

If moving image allows flow to become visible, then sound allows flow to become perceptible.

It is neither language nor silence, but a state between the two.

When experience has not yet been organised by concepts, logic, or language, it may appear as breath, wind, water, friction, resonance, or noise—vibrations produced as the body passes through the world.

Therefore, in River, sound does not function as an accompaniment to moving image.

Together, they form a relational perceptual structure.

Sound comes from the body, but also from reality. It belongs to internal experience, yet is generated through continuous encounters between the individual and the world.

Sound is not an expression of meaning.

It is the trace left by existence while meaning is still in the process of forming.

In this sense, River does not simply ask how sound can create an atmosphere within space.

It asks how sound, as an experience that cannot be fully carried by language, can create another possibility for continuously flowing and emerging relationships of existence to be perceived.

Theoretical Description

Sound does not belong to the subject.

It emerges through the contact between the self and the world.

Within this process, perception encounters a rupture when attempting to enter language, and something remains behind in the form of sound.

River understands this residue as “the soul that has not yet become language”—a relational form of existence continuously generated through flow.

Within River, I understand sound as an intermediary existence generated between the self and the world, rather than as an expression belonging to a single subject.

The world is not a static object. It remains in continuous motion and vibration.

Correspondingly, the consciousness and perception of the individual form an equally unstable internal flow.

When these two flows encounter each other at the level of experience, sound appears as a temporary phenomenon.

It belongs neither completely to the subject nor completely to external reality.

It is born from the relationship between them.

Within this structure, sound is no longer understood as an extension of language or an expression of emotion.

It becomes a mode of existence that has not yet entered the linguistic system.

It appears fragmented, extended, and impossible to fully encode—a trace of the failure and overflow that occurs when perception attempts to become structured as meaning.

Sound can therefore be understood as “the soul that has not yet become language”: an intermediate form moving between body, consciousness, and world.

Through the juxtaposition of moving image and sound, River attempts to reveal a continuously emerging relational field.

The image becomes the visible form of flow, while sound becomes its vibration and frequency.

Together they form a river that belongs to no single subject, in which self and world are no longer understood as two opposing ends, but are continuously regenerated through encounter, displacement, and resonance.

III. The Theory of the Grid

The Grid: A Self-Constructed Structure of Perception

A structure can define boundaries, but it cannot completely determine how an existence will understand itself through experience.

In my understanding, the Grid is the “limiting structure” that I continually encounter in my existence, perception, and artistic practice.

It is a structure that divides, organises, names, and constrains the movement of existence.

It operates across several levels.

The external world

• Time — stages and points of transition

• Space — divisions and boundaries

• Society — identities and roles

The perceptual level

• I can only see part of the world at any one moment

• Experience arrives in fragments

• Memory is discontinuous

The internal structure

• How I understand myself

• How I interpret the world

• How I organise what I feel

The Grid is therefore neither purely external nor purely internal.

It is the way in which I organise my relationship with the world.

I repeatedly emphasise the Grid because I am simultaneously constituted by it and attempting to move through it.

It is something that one encounters throughout different stages and points of life, repeatedly attempting to move beyond one limitation only to encounter another.

Yet I do not want to describe this process as “breaking the Grid.”

I am interested instead in returning to structure and learning how to flow within it.

The river is therefore not something that opposes the Grid.

It is continuity that continues to emerge within the Grid.

The Grid does not disappear.

Structure does not disappear.

But flow can still occur within structure.

Flow moves through the Grid rather than escaping from it.

Why does the Grid repeatedly appear in my work?

I am not only experiencing the world.

I am constantly becoming aware of the structures through which the world itself is organised.

I notice why things are organised in particular ways.

I experience fragmentation, desynchronisation, and unreality.

I repeatedly encounter the feeling:

“I am inside a constructed system.”

In my work, “breaking through” does not mean breaking rules or leaving the system.

It means that, even within structures that constrain experience, a moment of genuine continuity can still emerge.

It is not about breaking the rules.

It is about remaining connected within fragmentation.

Remaining in flow within division.

In those moments, I feel that I have touched something closer to what is real.

The Grid is therefore not a single metaphor.

It is a structural experience that runs through different layers of existence.

It exists in the time, space, and social relations of the external world, but also within the internal structures of perception and consciousness.

Individual experience is continuously divided, organised, and defined through these structures.

My practice does not attempt to escape them.

Instead, it asks how flow can continue to emerge within them—how relationships can be formed between fragmented experiences, and how a continuous experience of existence can be generated within limitation.

In a world from which structure cannot be escaped, how is flow still possible?

The reason the Grid repeatedly appears in my work is that it is both the world I inhabit and the way through which I understand the world.

My practice attempts, within this structure, to allow a form of flow closer to the real to be experienced again.

In River, therefore, the river is not a literal river.

It is closer to a continuously emerging perceptual field.

It connects past, present, and future; body, consciousness, and reality; memory and dream.

These nodes continuously establish relationships with one another, forming a constantly changing network of life.

The river is therefore not a line.

It is a continuously emerging network.

Theoretical Description

The Grid: Structure as the Condition of Becoming

If the river concerns a continuously emerging mode of existence, then the Grid concerns the conditions through which this becoming repeatedly appears in fragments, ruptures, and relationships.

This research proposes that human beings do not exist within a completely free, continuous, and infinitely expanding world.

Every experience must pass through some form of structure in order to be perceived by the body, understood by consciousness, and eventually transformed into knowledge of the world.

Structure is therefore not the opposite of becoming.

Structure is the condition through which becoming becomes possible.

The Grid is neither a literal object nor simply a symbolic metaphor.

It is a relational structure that organises experience.

It exists within time, space, social order, and perception itself.

Time divides life into different stages.

Space establishes boundaries.

Society assigns identities.

The body can only encounter portions of the world at any given moment.

Experience never arrives in its entirety.

It is continuously divided, delayed, reorganised, and only then enters consciousness.

We therefore never encounter a complete world directly.

We always inhabit experience as it has already been organised through structures.

At the same time, structure does not exist only in the external world.

It also exists in the ways through which individuals understand themselves.

Memory continually reconstructs the past.

Language reorganises experience.

Consciousness interprets perception.

The self continuously constructs itself through these structures.

The Grid is therefore neither a limitation imposed by external society nor a purely internal psychological mechanism.

It is the way in which body, consciousness, and world collectively organise experience.

For this reason, my practice does not attempt to break structure.

There is no position completely outside structure.

The more fundamental question is not how to escape structure, but:

How can flow remain possible when structure is always present?

This is where the river and the Grid begin to form another relationship.

The river is not freedom outside structure.

Nor is it resistance against structure.

On the contrary, the river always occurs within structure.

Because experience is continuously divided, because different stages of life become fragmented, and because perceptions become misaligned, there is a continual need to rebuild relationships between fragments.

Flow therefore does not mean leaving structure.

It is the process of continuously generating continuity within structure.

In other words, what continuously flows is not simply the body or space itself, but the capacity to continually re-establish relationships between experiences.

The river therefore moves through the Grid rather than escaping from it.

It allows nodes that were previously separated to reconnect through constantly changing relationships.

It allows individuals to regain a sense of continuity within lives that are repeatedly fragmented.

“Breaking through,” in this sense, does not mean leaving the world or breaking rules.

It means continuously approaching a more authentic mode of existence while structure remains present.

At that moment, the individual has not escaped structure.

They have re-experienced flow within it.

In this sense, the Grid is no longer simply a limitation.

It becomes a continuously generating perceptual field.

The river can flow not because structure disappears, but because structure continually becomes a new set of relational nodes.

Existence is therefore neither simply a river nor simply a static network.

It simultaneously takes the form of flow and structure through the continuous formation, dissolution, reorganisation, and reconnection of relationships.

Thus, River does not present a literal river, nor does the Grid represent a literal network.

The river is closer to a continuously emerging perceptual process, while the Grid is the relational structure through which this process continually passes.

Together, they form an open network of life in which past, present, and future; body, consciousness, reality, memory, and dream continuously establish relationships and transform one another.

This research therefore proposes that existence is not only a fluid modality, but also a form of structured becoming.

Structure defines the boundaries within which experience occurs, while flow continuously reorganises the relationships between those boundaries.

True existence does not occur outside structure.

It continuously comes into being within it.