Vertigo

About the work

Vertigo translates a passage from Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being into a spatial and bodily moving-image experience. Drawing on the idea of vertigo as a desire to fall, the work follows Tereza’s anxiety about preserving her individuality and the contrasting relief of a dream in which her body becomes indistinguishable from others. The narrative’s emotional movement is brought into tension with the viewer’s physical orientation.

In the 2026 installation, one image is positioned on a wall and another above the viewer. From a raised platform, the viewer first watches the wall-mounted image, then turns towards a mirror on the floor to see the ceiling-mounted image indirectly. The image’s actual location and the direction of looking no longer coincide. Watching requires an adjustment of posture, balance and gaze.

This change places psychological relief within a situation that may produce physical unease. As the character approaches a sense of release, the work invites attention to the body through which the scene is encountered. The transition between images is therefore also a bodily act. Developed across installation iterations and a separate single-channel film, Vertigo provides a foundation for Song’s investigation of spatial montage: the relationship between scenes is constructed through the viewer’s orientation and movement as well as through editing.