‘Continuous Cycle’ is a unique installation and meditation on the exploration of time, space and due to a happy accident – viruses.
This project began as an experiment with time and space. Hidden within the footage was a message I wasn’t aware of at first. While experimenting during the pandemic, I had the TV on in the background.
Over a year later, as I edited the footage, I noticed a faint narrator’s voice discussing viruses. When I amplified the sound, this voice became integral to the piece. Initially, I considered deleting it, but then I saw the connection between the video and the cyclical nature of virus spread over time.
Embracing this unexpected discovery, I incorporated ‘Agent Smith’s’ voice to add another layer of meaning. The result is a work that delves into the concepts of time, space, and viruses.
Think of the present as the tiniest increment of time—it quickly becomes the past, seemingly occupying no space in time.
The Buddha represents this continuous cycle, existing in both the present and past simultaneously. My camera constantly records the Buddha, feeding the image into a projector, which then projects the image back onto itself, creating a loop similar to sonic feedback.
The repeated images of the Buddha on the wall behind the actual Buddha extend into infinity, rendering the Buddha perpetually in the present and past.
Although the suffering caused by the contemporary coronavirus pandemic may seem far removed from the Buddha’s teachings of over two thousand years ago, his message remains pertinent: “humanity itself is the cause of its own suffering.”
A Buddhist monk recently observed that the coronavirus serves as a “grave warning from nature to mankind.”