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Disoriented in the Windowless Room

‘Disoriented in the Windowless Room’ is rooted in Serim Kwack’s experience living in a 5m² ‘Goshiwon’ — a type of ultra-compact, low-cost housing common in urban South Korea. The project reflects on how spaces lacking natural light disrupt bodily rhythms, memory and the perception of time.

A cluster of three 1:2 scale rooms contrasts total darkness with filtered sunlight. Cyanotype-coated surfaces register time as absence or accumulation. In these spaces, where night and day blur, the lack of temporal cues fosters reliance on artificial rhythms and heightens the psychological weight of confinement. The window becomes a symbol of hierarchy and lack of access to light, visibility, change and orientation.

As visitors peer voyeuristically into rooms they cannot enter, they confront the spatial and social invisibility faced by marginalised residents.

The installation suggests that when natural rhythms vanish, time doesn’t stop — it loops, echoing the slow, repetitive inertia of life without recognition.