NonProjectCBR: From 2018 I started a series of social practice projects and interactive installations in non-art spaces in Canberra that attempts to NOT define, to BREAK boundaries, and to NOT achieve. It is a practice of doing and enduring. Long-term project.
WHAT NonProject???
It is NOT a thing, just some attempts learning about how boundaries, definitions and systems work, and how to break them down if that is even triable. It is going NOwhere.
The project is interested in the things that arguably do NOT belong to their own categories, e.g. non-art artistic projects, non-music sonic works, non-space unauthorised locations. Inspired by Dr Geoff Hogg, I have decided in 2018 to do a "minimalist" project. During our collaboration with Wilson in the UABB "Welcome Home" project in Shenzhen, Dr Hogg encouraged us to start practising personal projects with limited resources in hand. With time, energy can accumulate and sprouts of ideas and projects grow from it. This reminds me of the European folk tale of making stone soup. I don't know, maybe I will be the stone, or the pot, or the spoon. Or I'd be a cooked carrot or potato in the soup. No one knows what we are getting out of it.
Cooking at home when the fridge is empty - that is another thing that has led me to this project. Imagine if you only had some seasoner and flour in storage. Surprisingly, that has always enabled me to make the most satisfying meal.
As an international student or migrant, like the others, I have arrived in a foreign place years ago with nothing but a nervous and confused self. Years later, I still remain an unstable identity. One obvious thing is, I can't get much funding for projects from either Australia or China, and neither of them would be utterly called home. So, cooking from nothing sounds great to me. In the long run, this stage would seem rather ephemeral, and a "pot-of-stone-soup project" would record it well.
Launched in 2019, Canberra.