The Stairers
2022- Documentation
Stairs are where human flow,
Stairs are where human become liquid.
"Stairs is neither a place nor a
thing", it is in between places we attach symbolic meanings to. The socially constructed importance blurs out in
the haze of familiarity and danger, dull and dynamic. A stairer is unattached to any concrete identity.
What can better explain water than pebbles? And what can better
explain stairs than its wall?
I pealed off
"skin of the stairs"
from its original space filled with unsettling and uncertainty. The
pattern carries memories I was familiar with but not intimate
with. The filth, rage, passion and confusion from anonymous
individuals are documented into images and shapes.
The flow is stopped,
it can be looked into now.
By bringing the stair’s skin into different
spaces, the intruding coarse
catharses of strangers revealed an aloof side of “home”.
The honesty lies in that not many people deliberately bring a pen with them to draw. The traces are drawn carelessly with keys, bottom of shoes, hands, or even blood. In this heuristic expression, secrete identities take over. A stairer is a stranger to everyone else, but a version of self they are most intimate with. A lover, a beast, a scholar, or a prisoner.
The most fascinating piece I found is a recording of dates. Somehow, someone records every date when they passes the staircase, and the dates align into a huge entity of pattern.
We honor the passing date to look forward to a special one. So what was they expecting? And if there's no expectation besides endless recording, it somehow gives shape to life itself-- When lucidity is temporarily gained in a space we cannot name, in-between places we expect to find meaning in but are doomed to fail, the cumulated colossal of traces.
