Flower Tunnel 2022

The train moves fast through the tunnel while roaming inside one flower after another. The film put the footage of the subway tunnels and the still photographs of flowers together, allowing them to interact. Watching this film is like embarking on a psychedelic cosmic journey. In the fast motion, particles of various colors rush towards the viewer. The screen is like a black hole, as if there is a gravity sucking the audience into the tunnel. The audience seems to experience passing through clusters of colorful nebulae, and also like crossing through a microscopic world. The flowers in the background are from still images made by the director. Using a special technique, from a time before cameras, based on methods of “Cameraless photography” and “Photogram,” photographer Gao Wei discovers her own way to work by hand: on her rooftop garden, a 15-minute walk from a national park in Seoul, she picks plants and leaves, some planted by herself, allowing the silver-sensitive particles and natural organic materials to interact. This results in a “cosmic explosion” of photochemical reactions that generate images from nothing. With these images on photo sensitive paper and on film , Gao Wei created two moving imaging works in addition to and inspired by the still images, Flower Rain and Flower Tunnel.