Tan Mu’s Interwoven World: Between Submarine Cable and Ocean Waves

In Werner Herzog’s Lo and Behold, internet pioneer Ted Nelson recalls skimming his fingers across a lake as a child, watching ripples form, break apart, and rejoin — a fleeting vision of the universe as an ever-shifting web. Artist Tan Mu knows this sensation intimately. Raised in Yantai, Shandong, she grew up in and around the water — swimming, sailing, windsurfing – before discovering freediving in 2019. At 10 metres below, she achieves neutral buoyancy: light refracted above, infinite darkness below, silence all around. In that space, time and scale dissolve, and perception shifts.