One day in my life

01/20/2021

Performance work, no actual size

yellow paper

I am often told to have a meaningful day, but what is meaningful and what determines the meaning of meaningful. To figure out what makes sense to me, I did an experiment where I was sitting outdoors and folding origami cranes all day.

It was popular to fold cranes in my childhood because it represents people's wishes for their sent person. Each paper cranes carry a little desire and eventually becomes a wish. Those who have folded 1000 paper cranes will make a wish. I started origami cranes when the sun was about to rise, the cold wind made my hands numb, and the air I was breathing in stung my lungs from time to time. These difficulties made me stop and even go back indoors to warm up. I started to regret everything I had chosen, and I kept thinking about whether I should fold paper inside the house or give up. I felt like a huge barrier had been created between me and my target, untouchable but real, intertwined with my jumbled thoughts. My body constantly signals that I should get back into my comfort zone. My will spilled into two parts, one told me what I did right now is meaningless, and I shouldn't waste my time hurting my body, another one told me I should stick to the goals you set at the beginning no matter what. At the same time, the non-stop cold wind kept blowing my paper cranes and materials everywhere, and I had to stop what I was doing to put them back, which made my progress even slower and made me more impatient.

In this confrontation, the sun slowly rose, mottled light and shadow began to appear in my vision. I gradually entered the state of the workflow. Even if the paper cranes that had been made were blown away, I no longer cared. I focus on creating new paper cranes. When I'm folding, there will also be friends who pass by the 4D yard or come to see me, more or less appear in the camera, and then turn and leave. I look at them as the passers-by in the long river of life. Their appearance makes me feel the warmth of attention and the enthusiasm of the collision of consciousness. When they leave, it highlights the feeling of loneliness. Only the cold wind and the sound of small animals have been with me. Looking back now, my consciousness seems to have left my body, and I don't know where it went. My body is like a machine folding without emotion, and my consciousness will not return to my body to continue working until the next visitor.

After the sun went down, I stopped origami and looked behind me. There were densely packed paper cranes. They appeared in a row as if they were organized. The moment I looked at them, I felt like they were looking at me. All the day's energy, time, and focus are devoted to these little paper cranes. I have an invisible line connecting with each paper crane. The relationship between them and me is no longer between people and things. It's the relationship between 1 and 0 in binary. At least that day, I formed my world with those paper cranes.

When I was about to burn all the paper cranes to the ground, I found myself feeling a bit reluctant and even wished the wind would be more robust so that I could give up on burning them all. I used traditional Chinese yellow paper, there will be visible ashes in the air when burning a lot, which means that people who are alive send banknotes to their dead relatives and hope that they can live with lots of wealth in another world. I took advantage of the properties of this paper, these paper cranes are only static objects before they burn, but when they burn, the ashes turn into a fly in the air as it is alive, carrying all my energy and spirit to an unknown distance.