Elsewhere

I wrote three sets of text tags for this project, each for a different purpose (online exhibition, social media, publication catalogue), each new one written when I had gotten bored of looking at the previous. Here all three are presented.

Participatory Installation. Embroidered Text, Paper, Second-Hand Ikea Desks.
Photos (images of participants interaction) Credits : Jiuming Duan
Page on RCA 2021:LINK

1. Elsewhere 异乡 is an installation exploring the tug-and-pull relationship diasporic individuals have with their homeland (a "there") and place of residence (a "here") through a study of embroidered languages and the desk as a liminal space existing in between the two places. The English title of the project comes from my answer to the 2021 UK census question "What is your country of birth?" Yet depending on how you look at it, the word elsewhere can be used to refer to either "here" or "there", something that the Chinese title of the project (Other's Land) alludes to.

2. “But the feel of a place takes longer to acquire. It is made of experiences, fleeting and undramatic, repeated day after day and over the span of years.” — Space and Place by Yi-Fu Tuan

Elsewhere is a series of “fleeting and undramatic” fragments about living in Beijing and London, as told by two different novelists from the Chinese diaspora (Shū Qìngchūn + Guō Xiǎolǔ) writing almost a century apart, and as felt by me in present day. It is a project about language, identity, cities and memory, and it is also an invitation to sew, to talk, to read and to find comfort.

3. 六月伦敦的夜晚，雨突然下得很大，非常适合敲打键盘。我之前看了一篇文章写到(大意)当你思念故乡的时候，你恰好拥有了它。所以其实我是幸运的，虽然离开北京八年了，但好像一直有一根线，连接着我和这座位于东八区的城市。也因为经过了这一年和一些模糊又广阔的概念(语言、身份、回忆)的死磕，此时的我虽然在地理位置上离北京很远，但在我的脑子里，北京的轮廓却从未像现在一样清晰。希望你和我一样，可以通过两位跨时代的华人作家细腻、丰富而有趣的文字，产生一些共鸣，得到一点慰藉，体验一些不同时代客居异乡的人之间相同的感受。也真诚地祝愿所有人都可以在这个嘈杂的世界里，找到可以真正表达自我的语言。

If you take a photo with a translation app, you’ll get a pretty confusing sense of what I’m saying.