Throughout my art career, « body memory » has been internalized as an element of my practice. What this series of works endeavors to discuss is the body memory of an era. The people of the last generation wore off the sharp, rigid system. The memory that came into being along the way is the greatest legacy left by the last generation. Nonetheless, these spiritual bequests left no traces at all in the official version of history.
As an artist, I launched this field research that combined performing art and sculpture: reapplying a texture for this private history via « touch » upon the once untouchable objects. With objects as the anchor and the bodies of the investigators as the measurement, it followed the shapes and volume of objects, exploring the body memory once interacted and yet disappeared.
Furthermore, the body postures during the investigation and their after images were employed to expand the very definition of « record », while inquiring the untouchable « void » beyond record. « Touch » as a symbol represented a starting point while the trajectory of it constituted the volume in the space, and the after images of the motion condensed into a new sculpture. The investigators in the new era took « touch » as the methodology to feel the present as well as to ponder and to reconstruct the experience of the days in the past.
Various countries in the world share a similar history. The authority in the past was washed away by the waves of times. Nevertheless, overweight objects remained. These objects clanged aloud out of collision and impact, trembling stubbornly amidst the growls of wills. The emotions and experience of the last generation still cling to them to date, echoing with the body memories in the past. Out of suppression and fear, people tend to avoid the conversation of these, whereas the body memories with historical objects at the core deposit slowly in time, turning into stratum with memories as the material.
The concept of « Anthropocene » happens to make its debut in this era. I am convinced that the changes in history between generations and the experience of internal emotions can be reviewed from a higher perspective in a similar fashion. In this field research, we look into the cross-sections of the memory stratum, focusing on the objects the ruling class in the past made to rule and to defend. These objects designed to keep people away and maintain the space for the ruling class bear similar textures: a sense of distance created by thick, high walls and barbed wires, cold barricades made of metal, and warnings cried from the stripes of yellow and black. The colorless, tasteless authority shrouded all, condensing everything within into a similarly rigid bedrock.
Through slow caresses, investigators softened the hard texture of the bedrock on the surface, sensing the tangled emotions embedded underneath. The investigators experienced the stratum of memory once again, while the adamant lines existing in the space turn tender and organic out of human touches. With eyes closed, our fingers could follow the lines like growing vines and wandered on the surfaces of objects, whereas technology records the trajectories of the touches, turning the motions of the body into solid 3D printing material and reengineering a new set of objects. What emerged with the objects is a mean to measure via body as well as a new way of understanding.
This is what this era demands: a new perspective for insight and a new way of understanding departing from private experience. How can we recapture the emotions of humanity buried in history? How may we re-experience the body memories and feelings of the last generation? How shall we excavate the « memory remains » dwelling in the bodies of each city to construct this private history?
While this string of inquiries remains indecisive, I think this indecision describes an individual of a new era engaging field research on those once untouchable objects and venues with his/her body. The process of the study starts with visualizing the touches of the individual on historical artifacts. 3D computer models are generated from the trajectories of the touches. Then scale models manageable with hands are printed to pass on the tactile experience and the meanings intended to be referred.