“river (immersive version)” builds on an earlier video work that deals with the mythological Sanzu River – a border between life and death. In this expanded version, the Immersive Room itself becomes the otherworldly location, a dreamlike space that unfolds across four projections. Visitors enter as fleeting apparitions. Their bodies are captured, their movements gently reflected by the room, but real control slips away. The immersion remains fragile: the experience is characterized not by resolution, but by floating between visibility and vulnerability. With sparse interaction and poetic abstraction, the work asks the question of what it means to linger in a world that is not quite one’s own – a world that looks back. In this way, the Immersive Room is conceived not only as a medium of experience, but as a symbolic shore where one hesitates, pauses, and asks: “Am I allowed to leave like this?”
River (Immersive Version)
A video installation as a poetic threshold between worlds.
Mayuko Kudo, born in Ōita, Japan, is a media artist focusing on site-specific art projects at the intersection of virtual and physical reality. She currently works as a Digital Content Creator and has been participating as an Artist Fellow in the “No End to the Road – Rethinking Culture” program at the Kulturforum Witten (NRW) since 2025. In parallel, she leads the ongoing initiative “Saalbau Witten Metaverse Cultural Simulation”, a project independently developed and realized in collaboration with the Kulturforum Witten as part of the NRW KULTURsekretariat’s #ARTInProgress funding program. Her responsibilities include the conceptual development and implementation of Metaverse-based content.