During the opening, Ursula Scherrer created a durational performance of writing. The act of the writing is part of the installation itself.
Scherrer wrote with coal in the automatic writing style onto the entire floor of the space. She continuously kept writing – the writing slowly pushed the people out of the space, including the artist herself. The entire floor was covered in her handwriting.
Due to the shape of the space the piece in its entirety was never seen.
The first person that reentered the gallery started to leave a trace. The piece kept mutating with every additional step made, highlighting the impermanence of everything.
The exhibition included a photograph as well as the exhibition text, translated from English into Chinese with Google Translate. The characters were copied by Scherrer onto the wall of the space (the artist doesn't know Chinese).
I arrive in Chongching.
Everything is new. Unknown. No familiar face. No familiar sight. No familiar sound. No familiar smell.
The floor is taken away from underneath my feet.
Who am I in this world?
I desperately try to hang on to my notion of I, the I that I know in my own environment.
But is the I that lives at home the same I that is here right now?
Different aspects of myself are surfacing.
I don't feel good in my skin.
My body is my body.
Is it really? It seems taller then at home.
Life as a comparison.
I walk around with my camera. Obsessively taking photographs.
Finding something to hold on to.
I photograph my body. Exploring my own landscape.
Writing.
Copying.
Back to the beginning of being.
That is how we learn.
Cleaning to find clarity.
Cleaning to be visible.
Cleaning to make space to find myself.
One pushes out the other.
Slowly.
With persistence.
Things come and go.
Only the moment exists.
There is no end.
The end becomes the beginning.
What is was.
The fleeting.
- Ursula Scherrer
