The Viscous Sea
Kian Peng Ong

Kian Peng Ong’s film sets the scene as we move toward Room IV: Retreat. As temperatures rise – both physically and metaphorically – the Dead Sea becomes a kind of ecological mirror, its surface shrinking as temperatures increase. Physically, warming air accelerates its evaporation, driving the water toward a brine so dense it moves less like a liquid and more like a slow, mineral paste. What was once a sea is transfiguring into residue.

This sets the stage for The Viscous Sea, originally presented as a six-channel film installation that explores the Dead Sea as a site of ecological disaster. Death is a central concept in this work, as it raises questions about what it means for elemental water bodies to die, how the Dead Sea can die again, which actors are involved in the events leading up to its decline. This film weaves together fragmented imagery and sound, tracing the journey of an exhausted, dying body as it slowly makes its way to the Dead Sea, where it floats – silently, slowly drifting off, along with questions about its future.