randian | 燃点

The world already existed. And we have almost never used a word of our own invention.

If that is the case, then how can we go about “creating a world” or even providing an account of this act?

In an era of unbridgeable distance from Origin and impossible-to-internalize Cause, “CAUSE” becomes a working title, the work pointing to “a structure at the service of cause.”

Every spare part, texture and detail within this structure is reinvented and reimagined, defined and generated according to certain “patterns,” the signs/images invented in the work of Inga Svala Thorsdottir and Wu Shanzhuan:

Perfect Brackets, 1992

Kuo Xuan，2010

Little Fat Flesh, 2012

This is a series of “metaphysical form”: a return from description to production, a building becoming the beginning of the “Incarnation” of the patterns and structures. However, it is not a church or a temple, but a functional building—a library.

Excerpt from On Cause, manuscript, 2015

The “CAUSE” library model appears in the center of the exhibition hall. Around it are full-sized “example objects” to be used in the building, which are projected outwards to fill the exhibition space and create a radiating structure akin to a center and an universe. But this center is not the one and only. Two opposing processes of the “CAUSE” models, “perspective” and “projection,” unfold simultaneously. If the vanishing point of the perspective is overlaid with the origin point of the projection, then the myriad things in the mortal world can be seen as dividing and multiplying within an infinite reverse spindle body. These spare parts in a temporary state of “superfluosness” are the “examples” of the movement. A hollowed cube with special edge (2017) is the one end of the spindle body, the other end is a pulverized mirror (1993).

Bracket Connection manuscript, 2017

Thing’s Right(s), the long-term creation begun by Inga and Wu in the 1990s, will unfold in the library as one of the books in its collection, presenting three “pages” amidst rich and complex threads:

30 “unidentified” things — Evidence

30 prints regarding “thing’s right(s)” — Index

10 photographs from the 1990s — Reference

The 30 “Unidentified Objects” in individual plastic envelopes along with A4 drawings of said objects,item no. 3, 1993

Thing’s Right(s), print, 2013

This “library” has provided a “reference for thinking,” but it does not ensure that such thinking will be pure daydreaming. One proposed site is in Thorsdottir’ s native Iceland. On the coast not far from the capital Reykjavik, there is a rarely visited stretch of empty land. Looking out not far in the distance, you can see a mountain range. It is a dormant volcano. In Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, the professor from Hamburg and his nephew enter the earth from there.

Image of the site. Photograph: Inga Svala Thorsdottir

During the exhibition, Long March Space will maintain a small archive of many rare publications and creation materials by Inga Svala Thorsdottir and Wu Shanzhuan. This exhibition was installed by Change Design and Construction.