Gamelan sounds, bells, discordant keys and bassy drones provide the haunting and disquieting soundtrack to this short animation. The videounfolds as a continuously shifting field of hand-drawn geometric shapes, organic patterns, figures, and letters, and while the artist’s hand remains unseen, the piece is saturated with evidence of prolonged, meticulous labour. Hours of working on paper are condensed into a pulsating surface of visual transformation that appears alive. At times, the page starts anew as a blank field, then quickly overtaken by layered lines and forms rendered in ink and watercolour.

The imagery ranges from chaotic doodles to near-constructivist abstractions and fleeting suggestions of figuration. Sometimes clear, often implied, a body is rendered, a distant figure is seen, or an eye slowly closes amidst the abstract patterns. The palette shifts between monochrome, black and white, and rich, complex colour combinations. We are brought from the dark, into the light, and back again. Interwoven throughout is the written phrase I’m in the dark now—sometimes dominant, forming the very basis of the drawn marks, sometimes scrawled over, obscured beneath layers of pattern and images. As the work progresses, the viewer’s eye becomes attuned to this phrase, searching for it even when it recedes into the background.

This haunting visual display operates as a meditation on process itself; on thought, feeling, and the uncertain paths between them. It reflects a state of emotional navigation, a working-through in real time, where the outcome remains unknown. The darkness invoked is not simply metaphorical, but a space of vulnerability, ambiguity, and emergence. The work resists offering a clear narrative or resolved meaning, and I’m in the dark now, even as a recurring phrase, articulates a liminal condition, one situated at the threshold of legibility, communication, and coherence. It maps this space through a fluid interplay of image, sound, and text, not as a mode of translation but as a state of processual becoming. The work echoes Ryoko Aoki’s broader practice, where everyday materials and symbolic forms converge to probe both tangible and intangible boundaries—inviting the viewer into a suspended space of reflection and transformation.