Utopia or Heterotopia
2025.05
1,920 × 1,080, Single-channel video,
Color, Sound, 4' 30"
during the video production process.
Rather than presenting the sunrise as a natural or symbolic event, the video treats it as a constructed phenomenon—one that emerges through digital rendering, virtual lighting, and controlled camera movement. Unreal Engine is used not as a tool for realism, but as a spatial simulator, allowing light, color gradients, and atmospheric conditions to be precisely choreographed over time. The rising sun unfolds gradually, emphasizing duration and transition rather than spectacle.
The video is installed in dialogue with silkscreened textile surfaces, where projected light interacts with the material textures, producing reflections and subtle distortions. As the same visual sequence progresses, the light activates the surface differently at each moment, blurring the boundary between image and physical space. What appears as a coherent utopian image on screen becomes fragmented and contingent once embedded within an architectural and material context.
By situating a digitally constructed sunrise within a confined interior, the work draws on Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia—spaces that exist within reality while operating according to a different order. The sunrise, traditionally associated with renewal and openness, is recontextualized as an event mediated by technology, surface, and spatial constraint. Through this process, Utopia or Heterotopia invites viewers to consider how perception is shaped not only by images themselves, but by the systems, environments, and materials through which they are encountered.