SSG Collective 2025 World Dongting Lake International Reed Art Festival with their new work, Floating Soil that elevates a whispering block of water reeds 13m above the ancient Dongting wetlands, where each stem sways gently in the breeze. Mirrored surfaces reflect the surrounding reeds, water, and sky, creating a space where what is real and what seems suspended merge.
SSG Collective returns for the third edition 2025 World Dongting Lake International Reed Art Festival following the success of their monumental Playground of Building Blocks in 2023. Their new work, Floating Soil , elevates a whispering block of water reeds above the wetlands, where each stem sways gently in the breeze. Mirrored surfaces reflect the surrounding reeds, water, and sky, creating a space where what is real and what seems suspended merge. The work lifts a piece of the wetland while preserving the memory of its roots, exploring detachment, ecological connection, and the poetic transformation of the landscape. As wind and light shift across the reeds, the piece continually changes, inviting reflection on distance, perception, and the delicate interplay between reality and imagination. As the artists them selves describe it :
A reed bed, poised in silent suspension ten meters above the ground, dances a serene ballet in its own realm. Belonging yet detached, it sways gracefully as it weaves its own space-time.
As the lake exhales and inhales, whispering echoes shimmer, resonating in an ephemeral world where frozen moments slip like phantoms through cracks in time.
As mist drifts from the lake's surface, it crafts landscapes where the mind no longer wishes to distinguish the real from the simulated.
In our upward gaze, "distance" is redefined—not measured in miles, but in the quiet uplift of the near-at-hand.
The festival runs form the 6th December 2025 until runs until the water rises, expected in late January - early February.
