Before Rain After 未雨後

Before Rain After, 2013
Two-channel video installation with a well, daily containers and window frames

Dimension variable

installation view: http://vimeo.com/68249516, 1min50s
Before Rain After/ well: http://vimeo.com/74417174, 7min9s

In Before Rain After, Tang Kwok-hin reflects on the accelerating pace of urban life and humanity’s complex, often contradictory relationship with nature. Presented as a two-channel video installation accompanied by a well, everyday water containers, and window frames, the work captures fleeting moments of reflection amid constant movement.

One channel documents puddles along the artist’s route from his home in Kam Tin to the exhibition venue after rainfall. Filmed from above, these ephemeral mirrors reflect shifting landscapes — rural fields giving way to dense urban skylines — creating dreamlike, inverted visions akin to looking up from the bottom of a well. The second channel records the artist collecting discarded household containers from surrounding streets and shops, placing them on the ground in his wall village during rain to gather water, then boiling it on the lawn outside the exhibition space until it evaporates completely — returning the water to the atmosphere in a ritualistic cycle.

Drawing on historical memory (when people desperately collected rainwater during droughts), Tang contrasts ancient survival instincts with contemporary urban disconnection. In a city where people rush from point to point, treating their surroundings as mere backdrop, the work asks who truly notices the environment and the changing conditions we inhabit. The act of collecting and evaporating rainwater becomes a paradoxical gesture — both a worship of nature and a critique of our alienated, “morbid” relationship with it.