丈量 (Measure) is a project I developed together with George Micah Kuhn (
@g_micah_kuhn ) last summer during STRATA Project, a residency with 1:4:9 Art (
@149.art ) and an off-site exhibition in Toli County, Xinjiang, China. The site comprises a marble quarry and a Gobi terrain that once lay beneath an ancient ocean.
Treating ‘measure’ as both means and metaphor, our work consists of a series of silicone foot casts morphing into a half-human-half-gazelle creature’s footprints along the Gobi Desert, accompanied by 3D renders of the full 20-kilometre-long speculative trail across the landscape. The footprints depict an attempt to map the site, which fails to exhaust it but is absorbed into the terrain itself through acts of presence, mimicry, and drift. As industrial measurements, units, and technics falter or decay, the body becomes the sole instrument: patrolling the terrain barefoot, imitating the endemic animal’s territorial logic.
At last, the creature’s footprints end at the edge of the quarry, as if gazing uncertainly into the uncharted pit.
This collaboration is an extension of elements in both of our previous practices. I use half-human sculptural forms to conjure mythical absence in my films. George researches animals, biomes, and Borgesian cartography in his 3D renders and animations. Here, we choose to multiply and transform our works into a process — an action on site — while the mapped and unmappable begin to collide.
Thank you
@aorbital and
@hao___huang for being amazing curators and conveners.
Images:
1. Silicone foot casts. Photography by
@149.art
2-3. Silicone foot casts. Photography by Flo & George
4-6 Speculative trails. 3D renders by
@g_micah_kuhn 
