a. The Perspective
Nature is important, and it seems to be very true. In contemporary education, we are constantly taught about this idea, even though I come from a metropolis with almost no access to the natural environment, which leads me to have no sense of belonging to nature like many urban people. The land, sky, and ocean have no connection and no common between us. National Geographic's natural scenery pictures cannot touch me, it is just a pile of data or a thin piece of paper. The concept of nature is like “heaven", for a long time I had no concrete imagination about it. After moving to Norway, I was struck by the accessibility of the natural landscape, which led to my concern for environmental issues. I'm trying to find an unfamiliar perspective from an urban person in this performance, "love is a touch but yet not a touch" (The Heart of a Broken Story, J.D. Salinger), an awkward situation of love and awe but not knowing how to approach it. The human being is seen as a foreign object, an object, like an ornament hanging on the earth -- wrapped in plastic, of course.
b. The Poetry
As part of the exhibition “breathing is air abuse”, I wanted to present in a poetic way that the only interaction I could have with nature is writing a poem to the sea. Eventually, the content of poetry is "sea" and "ocean", which can be a pencil moving on the paper or whispering softly, because its name can represent everything, and the endless repeated writing and whispering are my obsession with names. The movement of writing is gentle and romantic, think of gravity - how is the water gently wrapping around a planet.
c. The Plastic
Plastic belongs nowhere: Human turns to dust, but plastic has nowhere to go. I still want to love the ocean even though I have used plastic and owning countless pieces of them, even though human beings are probably the biggest piece of trash. It is the last struggle of urban people to love the ocean with a plastic shell.
d. The Water Phobia
I have never overcome my primitive fear of nature because my childhood traumatizing experiences led me to an extreme fear of drowning. Fear of nature is something which all mankind shares, and which makes it possible to retain the last respect. In the film, this alternating emotion with love and intimacy is strong but brief.
We often think that the appearance of human beings "destroys" the great mountains, rivers, lakes, and seas in nature. But is the beauty of nature itself defined by human beings? Can a frog, a bird feel that nature is beautiful? If there were no human beings, who would perceive and define the beauty of nature? Does the aesthetics of the earth itself exist because of human existence? People watch and worships the spectacular glaciers, dives into the ocean to admire the deep sea’s magnificent. In the billions of years of earth's history, countless beautiful landscapes have been born and died by floods and volcanoes, countless species have appeared and disappeared, and the universe is not devoid of life, but of life that can observe and appreciate it. I often feel that human beings are arrogant and boast that they want to "save the earth" when in fact we are as insignificant as dust to the earth. On the aesthetic level, however, humans are the only race that can appreciate and seek their own meanings because of the earth's natural aesthetics.
... and yet not a touch
2019
Performance Video Installation
05:25
Dimensional Variable