We Can’t Help but Turn Life into Stones
2022- Installation
<We Can’t Help but Turn Life into Stones> critically debates the artistic desire to create something original by exerting the desire to an extreme in a fictional scenario.
Several steps of intervention surrounding a manufactured jewlery piece documented a struggling between petrification and differentiation. To trace back beyond every machine and tool that isn’t “original”, one ends up trapped inside their own body. The body regenerate itself, produces for itself, yet this self-consuming loop is constantly falling back into petrified repetitions. A fundamental collision between the creator’s psychological drives emerges.
And by exhibiting this story, am I not repeating something long existing as well?
Several steps of intervention surrounding a manufactured jewlery piece documented a struggling between petrification and differentiation. To trace back beyond every machine and tool that isn’t “original”, one ends up trapped inside their own body. The body regenerate itself, produces for itself, yet this self-consuming loop is constantly falling back into petrified repetitions. A fundamental collision between the creator’s psychological drives emerges.
And by exhibiting this story, am I not repeating something long existing as well?
The Story begins...
One day, I held a jewlery piece and I saw the jewlerry isn’t unique. Was it displayed on similar showcases over and over again? Was it put together in a machine over and over again? Was the little rings on it cut out over and over again? Was the hammer that dug out this jewel forged over and over again? The fluid life and trembling atoms in the stone, in the metal, and in the hands that held it were petrified into a thing. Now it can be consumed and owned.
Chapter 1. “Body contains its own alterity.”
I set off to look for things that won’t turn into stones.
I saw my body moving, it never is
what it was in the past moment. Isn’t it something
that is absolutely unique? Isn’t it always new,
always belonging to me? I’m a stubborn
decorator, I wore my body as far as it extend.
But I can no longer walk, write, or move.
Chapter 2. “Inhereted inertia to restore to an earlier state of things”
The unique and self-sustaining decoration bound me down.
And as it collapsed within itself. I have no choice but to
turn my lively decoration into plaster, into latex, into
plastic. But now they too, can be made over and over
again. I saw the solid
surface taking over once more.
I understand now why someone talk about the "death instinct"- an inherited inertia to restore an
earlier state of things. We can’t help but turn life
into stones.
Chapter 3. “Swollow them back into me!”
Perhaps out of anger, or perhaps due to a primary
instinct, I wanted to consume the dead decoration,
to swallow them back into my body, let the
petrified be digested, be part of me again.
A feast was held. With a friend we ate away a foot, an elbow, and five fingertips. Energy that was frozen from my past body now warms up and flows back into our living bodies.
A feast was held. With a friend we ate away a foot, an elbow, and five fingertips. Energy that was frozen from my past body now warms up and flows back into our living bodies.
Chapter 4. “From ‘I’ to interlock”
As I ate with another, I saw that there are so many
bodies out there, each original and unique. The
tension within my own body always froze, yet if I surrender my
definition and connect different bodies instead, I
can become a live decoration of another, the other
can become a live decoration of me.
All did came from and will continue to be a copy of a copy of a copy, yet bodies sustained the fluidity in between them at this moment, without ever being able to be precisely predicted.
All did came from and will continue to be a copy of a copy of a copy, yet bodies sustained the fluidity in between them at this moment, without ever being able to be precisely predicted.
Chapter 5. “Force of perpetual desire”
Like a magpie, we humans can’t resist preserving
the shining findings. I documented the decorating
bodies, performed inside a video, knowing not
that by catching a moment I already sank back into
the catch of repetition. It should always be the
next performance that is yet within the body, not
the ones already born, that can escape the same old story.
Bodies in this box became things again, spinning over and over, endlessly shining in the pixel showcase. Visualizing the force of body, the force of perpetual desiring.
Bodies in this box became things again, spinning over and over, endlessly shining in the pixel showcase. Visualizing the force of body, the force of perpetual desiring.
I have failed in escaping repetition.
But it's only within this tale,
And this tale is told by me.
I have told it over and over again,
I failed over and over again.
This tale is told by me, this tale is told by me.
I have failed so I put it into a tale.
But maybe I can never escape it once and for all.
Or maybe I’m escaping it all the time,
only in each very moment.
