When ordinary life is on an accelerated pace of transformation under the impact of science and technology, individuals trapped in it have no choice but to feel increasingly helpless. The intensities between free will and orders feed art with the possibilities to ferment. This time, artist Yin Xiuzhen transforms the white-cube gallery space, a place where habitual experience and perception are often met with challenge, into a construction site and invites people to join her to water and mix cement. Together they could create a "highway" block by block. As a contrast to all the hustle and bustle, a simple and mild action like this sends out a warm invitation to people to indulge themselves in hands-on experience, rationality and transcendence…
Highway is a highly visible indicator of the development level of infrastructure. By placing a cement mixer in the gallery space, Yin Xiuzhen gives those who want to make a cement block by themselves an opportunity to operate the mixer, pour the concrete into prefabricated mold with a daily object they'd like to embed in. The process of manual labor is no different from what tens of thousands of construction workers experience on an everyday basis. Probably it is even a bit more "manual": as the drastic development of mechanical automation has already taken the place of manual work in many aspects.
Cement powder has the capacity to become hardened during the process of chemical reaction. Each participating "laborer" chooses a piece of daily object to be embedded in the soft and moist concrete... In a society witnessing increasing changes, encounters among people with different visions, among experiences from the past and the present, would inspire new sparkles in this context.
Daily object is a vehicle containing the unique traces and even smells of its owner. Before the cement hardens, Yin Xiuzhen and her working partners would take the daily objects out and pour butter into the hollow space they leave. The sweet and fragrant butter seems to be in contest with the cement that is getting hardened on the dimension of time. On the one hand, cement, the inorganic matter, blocks the way of butter, the organic matter. But on the other, grease of the butter slowly spreads and sinks into the cement, dissolving the hardness of it…
When the fragment butter is taking shape in the "mold" created by the daily object and slowly sinks into the cement, a unique sense of aesthetics is radiated from within both visually and olfactorily. In ancient times and even nowadays, butter is often imbued with multiple sacred implications in many parts of the world, and it is widely considered to stand for strength, power, holiness, kindness, happiness, health, purity and quality life. During the slow process of making, the laborers physically touch the substance that has been ruthlessly neglected, disenchanted and de-emotionalized by the drastically rapid development, summon the sentimental feelings and experience embedded in themselves, and witness the changing "reality" in the flow of time.
Braking is the process of making a vehicle go slower or stop. As the system is on a track of continuous acceleration, every individual who is trapped in it is doomed to feel powerless. Under such circumstance, people would easily feel frustrated. However, the world is also brimming with uncertainties beyond the control of the system. As a result, the constantly accelerating system would experience unexpected braking every now and then, which opens up a door for new possibilities to sneak in. One Piece of Highway is a simple and mild action, inviting people to come to work on the "construction site", and to test the potential of "braking" during the physical touching of construction materials – as the inertia we experience on the highway tends to make it elusive and somewhat distant.
Project, How Art Museum
