Approaching Dawn

Drawing on literature, films, and historical events related to the White Terror, the work weaves together four parallel moving-image narratives. Its characters pass through different historical fragments before arriving at a timber structure built by the artist inside Green Island’s Octagonal Tower. As the images move from actual locations into fictional sets, historical documents, stories, and the present exhibition site meet through the act of viewing.

The tower-like installation occupies the central light well of the Octagonal Tower, responding to the building’s original structure of surveillance. Four channels of video and a timber construction enclose a viewing space, where the position of the viewer’s body becomes part of understanding the work. Looking towards the structure from outside and then entering an interior surrounded by images alters the relationship between watching and being watched. By interweaving narrative and space, the work opens another approach to a historical site, making the spatial order left by power something that can be experienced and considered.