LOOK UP WITH ME...

See at Dutch Design Week
21-29 October, 2023

<Look Up With Me> explores the paranoia-inducing experience of the medical gaze through the boundary-blurring nature of ventilation ducts.

The journey begins within a room tilted to what a patient lying in bed would see. With the ventilation duct reaching out, twisting, detaching, exhibiting agency of its own, it mirrors not reality, but a mental perception of the diseased body. Faint voices can be heard coming from within, whispering gossip about what is happening to a not-present "SHE" in the medical room.

Paranoia becomes a source of validation that plays out within the ventilation duct. Accommodating the fragile and frightened existence of a body owner and assuming an alternate, imperceptible inner space spared from medical intrusion. Shadows shoot out from the openings along the duct, signifying this unknown space we're only able to inspect from the outside.  

No entrance allowed.


The project originates from a psychoanalitical research of paranoia from the diseased human body. The theorizing can be read from Min’s thesis <Speaking from My Organs>. 

Conceptualizing

Blurring in between interior and exterior of architectures, ventilation ducts often accommodate our insecurities within an intimate space.

How does the duct appear within a medical treatment room, where bodies filled with lesions become equally ambiguous in one’s conception of the Self?

Soundscape

A five-part soundscape of gossiping voices runs through the installation, evolving from suspecting the paranoiac behavior of a “she” in the medical room, to panickly noticing “she”'s disappearance. Language is fragmented, leaving only a faint sound of "sssssshhhe" in the end. 

It is unknown whether the gossips come from inside “she”’s head, or are they actual discussions from people around. The paranoiac perception of us as audience is kept alive in seeing and hearing.