witness C

WitnessC takes its starting point from an old newspaper image—a press photograph of the collapsed section of Seongsu Bridge, which broke apart without warning in Seoul on October 21, 1994. In the immediate aftermath, the broken segment—its torn edge, exposed steel, and sudden drop—was at the center of every media frame. The structure itself was the subject of attention, both visually and politically. But that focus did not last. Within days, the camera shifted. News images began to prioritize people over structure: rescue teams lined up in uniformed formation, officials delivering statements, and eventually, ceremonies celebrating the bridge’s return. The fracture that had once defined the event was displaced—pushed to the background, softened into context, and finally cropped out of memory.

This shift was not accidental. The visual language of crisis quickly gave way to the visual language of resolution. While the broken bridge faded, other images took its place—staged portraits of rescue workers in front of the wreckage, or official photos marking the reopening. These were not neutral documents. They were composed to suggest that the worst was over, that order had returned, and that the public could move on. The structure—the very thing that broke—was rendered secondary, while the performance of response became the main subject. These images belong to a long tradition of official image-making, designed to signal that the crisis is over and that the memory of rupture can now be managed. They are symbolic closures, visual gestures that turn damage into narrative and loss into ceremony.

WitnessC reverses that shift. It returns the fracture to the center—not as an emblem of tragedy, but as a structure that resists symbolic resolution. The form depicted in the image does not exist in reality. It was constructed entirely in a game engine, but rendered to resemble an official photograph—the kind found in archives or state media. This resemblance is intentional. WitnessC mimics the style and tone of national image-making: symmetrical, still, and authoritative. But what it frames is not dignity or recovery, but the architectural break that those images had learned to hide.

From a distance, the image holds the posture of official memory. But up close, it shows its cracks. Pixels emerge. Edges harden. The surface reveals its simulation. WitnessC is not a monument. It does not seek to commemorate or console. It is a critical imitation—a frame built not to replace what was lost, but to hold open the space where the image failed to look. In doing so, it turns the logic of public image-making against itself, and reanimates the very thing it was designed to forget.