10 Seconds

This is a non-fiction animation that captures the fractures of lived memory.

I reconstruct the ten seconds of my family’s experience during the 1999 Jiji earthquake through monochrome ink and oil painting. The fluidity of ink and the density of oil become physical analogues of collapse and suspension—where time liquefies, and memory refuses to settle.

The work extends into tactile materials rooted in Taiwan’s landscape of remembrance. Clay, ceramics, and layered paint are used not as decoration, but as attempts to give memory a temporary body—to let what is gone briefly regain weight and form in space.

In contrast, paper-based materials, including joss paper traditionally used in ritual offerings, introduce a texture of erosion and disappearance. These elements carry both cultural and funerary resonance, where image-making and ritual practice intersect at the threshold of loss.

Though rooted in a specific event in Taiwan, these materials point toward a more universal condition. Earthquakes, wars, and disasters do not only destroy landscapes, but also leave behind residues of time—fragmented, unstable, and persistently alive.

This work is a meditation on how catastrophe is stored in matter itself, and how fragile substances—ink, clay, oil, and paper—become vessels for memory that cannot be fully spoken.