We recently connected with Keer Zhao and have shared our conversation below.

Keer, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

I have been fortunate to be deeply involved in a variety of creative endeavors, spanning interactive installations, AR/VR experiences, live performances, and virtual productions, leveraging my expertise in crafting 3D visuals using Cinema 4D and Unreal Engine.

Among these projects, my most meaningful endeavor is my recent animated film, ‘The Deluge Within.’ This project holds a special place in my heart as it represents a personal exploration, a journey that culminated in a tangible creation.

I think of our minds as a glass vessel filled with water. The vessel constantly receives stimulation from the outside world. To respond to all stimulus, the vessel comprises, in a destructive way, developing cracks to balance out the pressure endured. These cracks, much like the mental fragments that surface from our subconscious, fleeting yet in nature, highly concentrated distillations of past experiences, memories, beliefs, and emotions.

This entire process is spontaneous – the vessel has no control over when, where and how the cracks appear, so do us.

I was very curious if I could transform those leakages into something visible or tangible to others, in the form of art. So I collected all my mental imagery, those were initially recorded in words and sketched on stickers.Each fragment arrived at different times and places, yet they share common threads, giving birth to a self-contained story made of fragments. Each element contributed to the story’s protagonist’s journey or constructed the world she inhabited. And the commonality among those fragments, such as “falling”, “dimensionless space”, “hanging”, “redness”, “floating”, “blood”, “destruction”, becomes the linkages that connect various scenes the protagonist goes through.

The fragmented nature of this process is reflected in the duality of the characters. In “The Deluge Within,” the protagonist is trapped in a world of redness, while in her dream, she evolves into another self that constantly falls out of various dimensions. The two coexist, collapsing the beginning and ending into a looping narrative that folds into the same point.

In fact, the avatar was a digitized version of myself. I scanned my face and transformed it into a digital representation. Most of the scenes were constructed using this digitized body, albeit in a distorted and exaggerated form.

In fact, it has recently earned a nomination and honorable mention for the 2023 ARFF Amsterdam Film Festival in the categories of Best Animation and VFX. For this short film, I handled every aspect of its creation, from pre-production, modeling, animating, rendering, to sound mixing. It’s a narrative that has been ‘stitched’ together. Each scene initially existed as a fleeting vision in my mind, and as they were woven together, they formed a coherent story.

Keer, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I grew up in a small town in China and never really contemplated what the future held for me. Honestly, I don’t have many clear memories of that time in Yixin. Everything is shrouded in a semi-transparent haze, and I vaguely understood that I would complete my compulsory nine-year education, attend college, find a job, get married, and simply live. The entire process felt like a repetition, as though I were a part of an intangible factory, being produced, packaged, shipped, used, and eventually recycled.

In my final year of Middle School, an opportunity arose to take an entrance test for an international school in Shanghai. I left my small town behind and spent five years in Shanghai before pursuing my bachelor’s and master’s degrees abroad. Today, I am based in New York, working as a freelancer and a new media artist. This wasn’t what I had expected for myself. I began my college journey as a Chemistry student, with communication arts as a side interest, almost a ‘hobby.’ For me, studying Science was like exploring the unknown ‘outside’ world, delving into nature and the universe. However, there came a moment when my progress slowed. I can’t quite pinpoint what caused those negative emotions to engulf me during that depressive period. I paused and realized that I couldn’t continue without releasing those negativities and abstract feelings into a visual form – photography, films, and digital arts.

It was akin to watching people flail their limbs while drowning, desperately reaching out for something to grasp, to survive. At that moment, I turned around to confront a black hole that had been lurking at my back for a very long time—a void I had unconsciously ignored and avoided. That was the moment I made the life-altering decision to shift my path from Science to Art, journeying ‘inwards’ instead of ‘outwards.’ It was a similar journey, but in a different direction, an exploration of my intrinsic self and the meaning of my existence, if it exists at all. Throughout this transformation, I’ve allowed my intuition to be my guide, as it always has been.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

Looking back at my journey, my main goal has always been to make abstract feelings and thoughts tangible. Emotions often hit me like a gust of wind, intangible but deeply felt. My mission is to capture these feelings and turn them into something others can understand or connect with, even if it’s in a different form. Therefore, I learn and experiment with various art forms and technology – virtual production, video installation, interactive installations etc. I always believe forms are just tools to express, and what you are feeling, and why you are feeling it, is the most important part in art making.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The most rewarding aspect of being an artist or creative, for me, is experiencing the moment when a piece is completed and enters the public domain. It’s at that juncture where I can perceive myself through the artwork, but from the perspective of a bystander. As my artistic output is spontaneous, I have minimal control over what I will create and what it will ultimately become. Only when I step back and observe the entire process, viewing my creation as an audience member, do I truly comprehend its essence. I come to feel it in that moment, then let it go, allowing it to exist independently.

It’s in this moment that I realize my art no longer solely belongs to me. The work’s meaning, purpose, and even my identity as the creator dissolve, and it transforms into a distinct entity in this vast, complex world, drifting freely. Experiencing this, I find an overwhelming sense of relief and fulfillment, understanding that I’ve effectively communicated with the world in my own unique language.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.keerzhao.com
• Instagram: @k.oneear
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keer-zhao/
• Twitter: @k_oneear