Beijing Project n.24 Zhu Yu 朱渔

From the artist’s statement: “The first time Alessandro took me to Bernard, I saw the machines and equipment. Their design is very beautiful, very much like living bodies. For mechanical bodies that break down and age, the only redemption I could think of was wrapping: to preserve the SQX bodies lying there as one preserves the remains of animals.

“Even if this is futile, even ridiculous, I really want to see it as a living being, with a date of birth, with ageing, illness and death. For me, preserving a specimen of an SQX is the same as preserving a specimen of any living body. When I preserve the mechanical body the way specimens are kept, sealed and immersed in formalin, will the result really be what I imagine? I want to give it a trace of life and of time.

“Before that, I asked the factory staff whether they liked the products they worked together to make. They all had reasons not to like them – real, frank, understandable reasons. This is their work: precise calculations, repeated operations, the pressure of life, the need to work; and then they produce one miraculous mechanical body after another. In the end it is not loved by the people who created it, yet it is used in many fields. One day it grows old, it dies. I have every reason to make the remains of the SQX into a specimen, and bring it back into your sight.”