SEOUL BIENNALE

RAAD was commissioned to create an installation piece for the 2017 Seoul Biennale, whose theme was “Time, Space.” RAAD chose to explore the tension between civilization and the natural world, through the lens of “Deep Time.”

Ultimately, for RAAD owner James Ramsey, the piece became more than this; a reflection on life and death, scales of time, and a meditation on redemption and rebirth.

Using advanced optics, sunlight from a nearby street was channeled into the defunct basement installation site, shining natural light onto a plant installation growing in a fissure cracked into the concrete floor.

The cycle of day and night was then sent into “fast-forward,” with a sunrise and sunset every twenty minutes, to illustrate how, on large scales of time, nature inevitably breaks down and consumes the manmade.

So, as civilization has consistently endeavored to attain mastery over the elements, it is a futile effort, with human existence only the blink of an eye in geological time scales.

Drawing from 70s dystopic films and the work of artist Buster Simpson, “Invasive Regeneration” is a work of irony, one in which an advanced control of the natural world is used as the very vehicle that allows nature to erode and destroy the manmade.