If Narratives Become the Great Flood

Oral myths inherently feature anthropomorphism, narrative fragmentation, and detachment from physical reality, making listening to a myth akin to experiencing someone else’s dream, a “consciousness state” form of narrative. This “consciousness state” indeed constructs the ancient worldviews of various ethnic groups in understanding themselves and the cosmos. How can we, people living in the contemporary world, understand such foundational cognitions? This inquiry is not merely a retrospective look at an ancient topic but represents a transcendent method of understanding, surpassing the way we imagine the world. In the contemporary world view constructed by mainstream science, and even in the face of the global pandemic, is this constantly changing and mutating situation also revealing a reality we’ve overlooked? Perhaps the reality we face today is another kind of “stable development” myth. This project aims to capture a common narrative feature among myths, consciousness, and contemporary imagery—a fragmented, repetitive, and non-didactic narrative structure—and integrate it into a dreamlike “consciousness state” script. By using contemporary imagery to interpret various forms and symbols from ancient myths, the work attempts to reconstruct our contemporary understanding of the world.

A visual artist whose primary mediums are video and spatial installations. LIU Yu’s works involve extensive field research and collection of documentary materials, prompting her to reorganize these narratives’ possibilities. She integrates fragments from space, history, imagery, and narrative into a tightly connected, supplementary narrative. Through the perspectives of humans, changes in spatial attributes, and the flowing identities of objects within systems, she reorganizes the familiar, stringent structures and scientific methods into a blurred boundary, delineating the process of human evolution.