A Residency Project
From 2021-2024 In Xiamen, China (中國廈門)
Since 2021, I have spent time each October residing in Aotou （澳頭村）, a small coastal village in Xiamen. The contemplation of place and the ocean has always been the guiding premise of this 'Blue' project. When we speak of blue, in this particular context, it resonates with the ocean, but blue can also be the sky, the climate, or even spirit and emotion.
When a location is given a name, specific histories and cultures nourish and shape local identity, but at the same time, it can also transform into a distant ecological landscape. As I wander through the unfamiliar streets and alleys of this foreign place, I continuously explore the relationship between myself and this maritime space through 'resemblance.' 'Blue' serves as a guide, connecting to other places during this journey filled with deconstruction. In About Blue, characters like the humanized Mr. Dolphin, the seaside Mazu Temple, wooden butterfly seeds along the roadside, the chive oysters in seafood restaurants, and the people of the related community, all form an adventure that exists in the 'imagination' and 'reconstruction' between reality and fiction. I attempt to carve out a stretch of coastline between the ocean and the land, allowing the place to occasionally reflect upon space, and for blue to spread into broader environments and forms of existence.
* This project was commissioned and executed from 2021 to 2024 at the Nordic Contemporary Art Center in Xiamen.
2022
Chapter 1- An Oceanic Text Worthy of Being Filmed
Blue is a man with a crown of grass on his head, gazing down at images in the water.
Blue Encounter is the core component of the first chapter of the project about Blue, "An Oceanic Text Worth Filming", which is a half-real, half-fictional text written by the artist and his friends from afar, based on his own imagination and local observations during his residency. The text is placed in a blue studio intentionally constructed by the artist, inviting the viewer to imagine the images and scenes that the blue screen allows to replace in the reading of the text.
Blued Blue, Exhibition site, Nordic Contemporary Art Center, Xiamen, 2022
* The three blue posters on the wall borrow fragments from the voice-over of Derek Jarman's BLUE. I let the text disappear into the blue, leaving only the sentences containing the word "blue" in white. They drift across the surface like waves that keep forming and fading, becoming the only traces that can still be found within the blue.
2023
Chapter 2 - Look for the Chinese Dolphin
We,
finally free to travel in the outside world,
no longer scared by the surveillance of “fever”
However,
an invisible stream of heat is already upon us,
the ocean is calling “blue”.
I walked around the coastal city of Xiamen with a thermal imaging camera, trying to record beaches, islands, aquariums, seafood markets, and Mazu temples. In addition to stripping away color in the real world, the thermal imager's inability to penetrate glass and water makes the recorded material a starting point for reflection on the ocean, its life, and its relationship to humans and human society. The scenarios in John Berger's Why Look at Animals have not disappeared and continue to provide a landscape of nature for human perception and cognition of non-human life. The video "Blued" provides a different perspective with the tool of thermal imaging, trying to provoke viewers to rethink the connection between human beings and (ocean) life and (ocean) environment.” “Temperature" not only serves as a metaphor to demonstrate the separation between different living beings, but also reflects the inalienable and necessary connection between climate change and modern culture.
Blued Blue, Exhibition site, Nordic Contemporary Art Center, Xiamen, 2023
2024
Chapter 3 - Blued Blue (Vol.II)
The blued adventure could also include you.
On a patch of grass by the roadside in Aotou village, I discovered something resembling fish scales. These seeds, known as "wood butterflies," were picked up and strung together with fish scales to form a sculpture resembling a pearl necklace.
Blued Blue is a semi-real, semi-fictional text I co-wrote with a distant, close friend in 2022, though only half of it was completed. In Chapter 3 of About Blue, I decided to leave the latter half of the narrative to the audience present on-site, inviting them to write their own ocean stories on the white walls within reach of the sculpture.
Just as every coastline is not eternally unchanging, natural and human interference continuously reshape their original forms. Each time a participant picks up a pencil to write their story on the wall, the sculpture, suspended in midair and trailing onto the floor, also transforms its shape in real-time.
