Title of work: Weight of the Soul

Name of Applicants:CHUANG, Chih-Wei

Location of School:TAIWAN

Name of School/University:Taipei National University of the Arts

Description

The work was initiated in remembrance of a friend who passed away. I tried to write down some imaginary words about the process of something (temporarily defined as soul) leaving the body during death. “A floating illuminated sea in the air, following the flow of the crowd, filling the air, gradually clearer.” Maybe because of influences by movies, television and visual imageries, we’ve always imagined soul is something that existed within our body since birth.  

When someone is dying, one substance after another leaves and evaporates from the dysfunctional body. “Soul” is one of them.  And I have new interpretations on this substance. I imagined this substance illuminating in the dark. When it was in the human body, or living inside the body, it circulates in brain, blood, muscles, pulse and even consciousness. It was until these living spaces no longer provide growing space then it will be freed from the body. Following the changing of air circulation in the physical world, this private and long fighting life will eventually goes to where it belongs, somewhere that has no weight and as vast as the ocean. This “vastness” is as if what Baudelaire mentioned in his poem, representing some place that is quiet and peaceful.