When the Sand of the Desert Flows Like a River
Video installation, 15 mins, Director
When the Sand of the Desert Flows Like a River is a personal interpretation of the 10-day desert experience in Lios Labs. Coming from Beijing, one of the biggest cities in the world, I rarely had any chance to be inside of an open space like the desert. Young people growing up in China are generally distant from nature. So, camping for 10 days in the Błędowska desert was a real challenge and a completely new experience for me. I used my camera to capture the nuanced moments as well as the ups and downs of understanding my relationship with the environment. In the beginning, the silence and the peacefulness made me emotional and clueless. I cried, cried and cried, and almost ran away. But something held me back. Was it pride? Stubbornness? Or the deep bonding with the others in such an unknown space? I wasn’t so sure. When I made it to the end, a sense of ease and familiarity in the desert had finally grown inside me. Just as I wanted to claim myself as part of nature, part of the desert, part of this community, I learnt that Błędowska desert was actually man made. The "nature" was in the end "artificial". The desert was once a “forest”. The only place I belong is the group of artists. The irony of it made me think, are human beings really part of nature? Or are we just making everything into what we could fit into, what we could use, what we could colonise? Why are we constantly searching for a sense of belonging? Control? And ease? In a space? A community? And a time frame? Will knowing what does not belong eventually give us the answer, what belongs?
Realised under the frame work of Lios Lab Resiidency.
Exhibition:
Festival of the Future Desert, Magdeburg, Germany 2022