Drained is a documentation of a performance by Hiram To. Each video in the Drained series can be seen as individual works, yet they are conceptually similar in that they were all generated from an idea that was inspired from the Hong Kong streetscape. The idea expanded into binary concepts, such as the real and the constructed, the exposed and the masked, the material and the immaterial, the speakable and the unspeakable.

In the piece the camera is set up at one end of a corridor with fire approaching the camera from the opposite end.

Ellen Pau, born in Hong Kong, began her art career while studying radiography at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, creating her first experimental super-8 film, The Glove. She co-founded Videotage in 1986 and received the Asia Cultural Council Fellowship in 1992, creating Song of the Goddess in the U.S. Her international career launched at the 1995 Gwangju Biennale, followed by exhibitions at “City on the Move”, Asia Pacific Triennial, Shanghai Biennale and Taipei Biennale. Since 1996, she has been a director at the Microwave International Media Art Festival. At the 2001 Venice Biennale, she presented Recycling Cinema. Recent exhibitions include Awakening: Art in Society in Asia 1960s–1990s (2019) at the National Gallery Singapore, What About Home Affairs (2019) at Para-site and Shape of Light at M+ Facade (2022). Her works are held in collections of the Hong Kong Museum of Art, M+, and Griffith University. The Asia Art Archive launched her archive in 2023.