Ghost in the Ocean
Photo by Tatsuki Katayama
Photo by Tatsuki Katayama
Ghost in the Ocean
2025
Video 11min 8 sec
One day, while I was swimming in the ocean, a plastic bag drifted toward me.
It was shining brightly, reflecting the sunlight.
But it could not take part in the cycle of life.
It remained in the ocean, drifting alone, as something unwanted.
To me, that plastic bag looked like a ghost of humanity.
To imagine the drifting plastic bag as “me”.
Perhaps through this imagination, we can find a way toward healing —for the Earth, and for ourselves.
Ghost in the Ocean
2025
映像 11分 8秒
ある日、海の中を泳いでいると一枚のビニール袋が流れてきました。私にはそれが、人間の幽霊のように見えました。
私はそのビニール袋を拾い上げ、人のかたちに切り、再び海へと漂わせました。海の中を踊るように漂う乳白色のビニール人間は、儚くもあり、美しくもあります。しかしそれは、大きな「いのちの循環」に加われず、ずっと孤独に漂い続けます。
海を孤独に漂う一枚のビニール袋を「私」として想像すること。そんな想像力の先に、地球と私たちの救済があるのではないかと思いました。
note『Ghost in the Ocean』 循環と魂の孤独の話
ESSAY "Ghost in the Ocean"
KYUNCHOME
We hear the phrase "environmental issues" all the time these days. Yet, the more I hear it, the more I feel a certain dissonance. It is because the term feels so vague, massive, and ultimately distant.
To begin with, the word "environment" covers an incredibly broad scope. The society humans built, the nature stretching around it—even the universe itself—could probably be categorized as the environment. On top of that, it lacks a subject. Whose environment exactly are we supposed to be concerned about? A mountain of cynical questions like this bubbles up within me.
However, a certain answer has probably already been given. When we talk about "environmental issues," the implied subject is humans, and the "environment" refers to the surroundings enveloping humanity or the surroundings that humans have destroyed. In other words, when we use the term, we mean "the problem of the surrounding environment that affects human survival."
In truth, we should not look at this solely through a human lens. Every living creature surely faces environmental issues from its own distinct perspective. For now, however, rather than stepping into that broader territory, I would like to focus first on what the environmental issue means for us as humans.
When it comes to the environmental issue for humans, I don't think it is a "problem of the environment" at all; rather, it is a "human soul issue."
Let me write about what I mean by this while introducing the piece.
My latest piece is titled "Ghost in the Ocean." It is a video work. Inside the video, a plastic bag cut into a human silhouette drifts through the sea. It floats all alone through the vast ocean; even when a massive school of fish appears, it never blends in with them, continuing to drift in eternal solitude.
Therefore, it would be very simple to describe it by saying, "This is a work about environmental issues." On the other hand, the vague scale of the phrase "environmental issues" and its inability to resonate with the physical body don't quite align with what I am actually feeling.
As I mentioned earlier, the word "environment" evokes a state that surrounds us, a world outside of ourselves. Adopting the attitude of "there's a problem out there, so we have to do something about it" means the problem itself has not yet hit close to home.
However, when I retrieved a plastic bag drifting in the sea, cut it into a human shape, and returned it to the ocean, the scene that unfolded was entirely different from such an "outside" environmental problem. I realized that this is a problem of the soul's solitude—one that all of humanity has fallen into. In other words, it is something deep within us, pressed tight against both our flesh and our soul, and progressing in real time.
What do I mean by this?
While diving in the ocean, I have encountered plastic waste countless times, and each time I would collect it, thinking of what a nuisance it was. As you know, plastic is something that drifts in the sea for years, even decades, without decomposing; it is an entity unable to join the cycles of this world. That is why its mere presence in the ocean is so disruptive.
But one day, it clicked.
"An entity unable to join the cycles of this world."
Suddenly, that plastic waste and the human form overlapped perfectly.
Humans, too, are entities that have failed to join the cycles of this world. Because of this, I had a premonition that perhaps our lives are exactly the same as this plastic waste that continues to drift through the ocean.
In short, the plastic waste drifting in the sea looked to me like a human ghost—a phantom, a reflection, a soul.
If we look at plastic waste purely as an environmental issue, the conversation ends with, "Humans should clean up the trash they made." But that wasn't it. It felt as though a voice was telling me: You will meet the exact same fate as the trash you left behind.
When I let the human-shaped plastic bag drift in the sea, I felt as though I could clearly see that destiny. The milky-white plastic human drifting as if dancing in the water is both fragile and beautiful. Yet, it is always alone. Even when overwhelmed by an uncountable school of fish, it merely floats isolated on the periphery of the group. No one acknowledges it. Even if that plastic bag stops drifting and decays in the ocean, it will never be consumed by something else to return to the wheel of life. I thought about what a lonely fate that is.
This is why I came to believe that this is a problem of the soul's solitude.
The loneliness of the soul cannot be healed immediately. It is difficult to even offer a solution.
However, I also feel that it is not too late.
Inherently, we were supposed to be entities within the cycle of life. We are beings that eat and are eaten, kill and die, return to the earth and become nourishment.
What this video reveals is a kind of apocalyptic future, but it is also a reflection of who we are right now.
How can we join the crowd once again as a living lifeform?
How can we stop being a nuisance and become a part of the cycle?
Questions like these keep surfacing, and the answers remain hazy. Even so, I believe that holding onto these questions is what matters.
To look at plastic waste once more, this time as a problem of our own souls—the pain that comes into view at that very moment is precisely the pain required for our recovery.