DRIFTING BODIES
4-channel video, Colour 4K/HD, 10mins 30 secs., 2025
Directed and edited by Jingru (Cyan) Cheng and Chen Zhan
Cinematography by Chen Zhan
Sound design in collaboration with Shuoxin Tan
Drifting Bodies is composed of two video works in dialogue. Visitors move first through a projection of Singapore’s Jewel Rain Vortex at Changi Airport, then enter the sensorial environment of Thailand’s Vajiralongkorn Dam Reservoir, recreated through a three-channel installation in a darkened room.
This spatial passage—from a luminous public spectacle to a hidden black box—collapses the vast transnational distance between two technologically mediated waterscapes. At the Jewel, the world’s largest indoor waterfall pulses silently, appearing tame and contained. Yet its flow is tied through a transnational power grid to the Vajiralongkorn Dam, where the Karen Hill Tribe lives on floating rafts, their everyday rhythms bound to the dam’s water pulses that generate electricity for distant spectacles.
The video installation debuted in the exhibition HOW MUCH WATTAGE IS ONE HANDBREADTH OF WATER at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York (2025).