Kaiween Kang
Double Surroundings
Kaiween Kang’s creative approach is mostly based on social context and theoretical research, experimenting with the moving image medium itself and reactivating the format and model of the moving image. Their research direction is to search for the “ecological” existence of the moving image, and to explore a new relationship between “human beings” and “the world” in the technological increase of entropy in the Anthropocene.
Double Surroundings uses thunderstorms as a planetary mechanism of apocalypse to explore perception under postcolonial and posthuman conditions. Filmed across Greek cities, mines, fishing boats, and night ferries, the work treats sound as a primary medium, forming a noncentered acoustic cosmos shaped by weather, geology, and the sea. Alongside the filmed landscapes, three additional screens present AI-generated still interiors known as demon rooms, which share the same sun, universe, and temporality as the real locations. The narrative begins with the Biblical parable of Grayson's Demon and is later rewritten through the cosmology of the Classic of Mountains and Seas, shifting from conflict and redemption toward relations, transformation, and coexistence. Rather than depicting disaster, the storm appears as an ongoing internal apocalypse, opening a multispecies and planetary sense of time and relation.