On the Back of Silver Dragon
On the back of Silver Dragon
April 2024
Medium:
Mixed media installation; AI-generated video, plastic, fan-driven kinet-ic elements, LED ring light, miniature cityscape
On the Back of Silver Dragon unfolds like a hallucination: plastic, air, and miniature bodies caught in the draft of spectacle. A ringlight, mounted with strips of plastic film, spins under the breath of a fan—its surface lifts and collapses, flinging tiny figurines into erratic flight. They tremble helplessly, passengers of wind. Above them, larger figurines—men in suits, women seated behind them—stand steady, gendered and unmoved. The dragon does not choose its riders, but they remain in place — a choreography of social fixity.
Behind this kinetic sculpture, three video screens shift between AI-generated images of farmland and city. At first, the scenes are pastoral—clean, ideal. But as the images deepen, the farm animals melt into grotesque abstractions: color smears, alien lifeforms, uncanny residue. This is Baudrillard’s fourth-order simulacrum—the collapse of the image into pure detachment, a fantasy that no longer pretends to represent reality. The machine does not understand what it depicts; it simply generates the illusion of coherence.
Around the dragon lies a miniature city made of salvaged materials. A tiny toy fire truck raises its ladder toward the flying ring—a heroic gesture, too small to reach. The absurdity lingers: aspiration rendered miniature, power rendered kitsch.
The piece resists resolution. It vibrates with instability—social, visual, mechanical. Its wind is not symbolic; it is literal. And yet through this breath, it animates a world where class floats, gender stiffens, and effort, like plastic, flutters upward only to fall again.
On the back of Silver Dragon
April 2024