This work documents the impending erasure of politically charged architectural spaces within a former Air Force headquarters currently transitioning into a cultural hub. These historical military structures, sealed off from public access due to their complex political associations, exist in a state of suspended animation—abandoned yet preserved, hidden yet present.
Upon learning of the site's planned demolition, I gained rare access to these restricted spaces and employed advanced 3D scanning technology to meticulously capture their volumetric presence. Rather than creating conventional photographic documentation, I generated comprehensive three-dimensional digital models—spatial obituaries that will persist after the physical structures have been erased from the landscape.
The project interrogates how politically sensitive sites negotiate their own disappearance and the selective preservation of memory. By creating immersive digital replicas of spaces deemed too politically charged to be seen, the work challenges institutional attempts to control historical narrative through architectural erasure. These digital phantoms become testimonies to what authorities prefer remains unseen—architectural witnesses preserved in the immaterial realm of data.
Through this technological intervention, the work questions who controls the afterlife of politically complex spaces, and how digital preservation might function as a form of resistance against institutional forgetting.
The Modernological Project of Immersive Elapsing Images (2018)
Animation Video
4 mins
Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab, Taipei Taiwan