I got a great letter back from Julia from Platform China – she gathered notes from the seamstresses about the dinner event we held in Beijing.
Yang Rui:
As the participants are involved in the whole work, it reflects the relationships between different individuals and, people and the society. The course of sewing shows not only the communication between the people at the table, but also shows the communication between the eaters and the seamstresses, which, let us think about more of the relationships in this world. I feel so happy to be involved and become clearer and clearer to understanding the meaning of this work.
Ji Fei:
First, I feel pleasure to attend this activity, this is the first time for me to be involved in such a video or installation project(work), which enables me to have a deep understanding of the artist’s initial meaning. To me, it just like an entrance to the contemporary art for me. It provides me a way to change my personal view—from a people involved as a seamstress to an outsider, you know, I can really feel two roles in this artwork.
As part of the audience and part of the involved people, I saw people talking, laughing and exciting when I was sewing. Also, in my action, I mean during my sewing, I interrupted their talking and even thoughts, I think this shows how fragile the world could be, because even a simple string can interrupted their normal eating and talk, and everything is posited in a world that filled with different kind of interruption. And when these interruptions added together, it may even ruin the whole.
Yang Ru:
It’s my honor to be involved in this artwork which enables me to understand the meaning of this activity. As the sewing become faster and faster and tighter and tighter, the people’s reactions at the table varies a lot: from slowly tasting the food to feeling hard to get the food, from simple conversation to singing at a high volume, from simply sitting at the table to trying to break the constraint, from people starting to know each other to more familiar and intimate with each other, these all happened along the course when the seamstresses sewing them together.
I feel it reflects a truth that: to enjoy the freedom from the constraint, and to accept the constraint from the freedom, this is life.
Julia Fu (Fu Lang):
It was an exciting night and I really enjoyed it, not only with the sewing, but also the whole atmosphere.
We planned our sewing carefully, from the changing of the length of the string, to the speed of the action, and every little change could change and interrupt the people at the table at last obviously. I think the meaning of this work is very clear, and people can also have different ways to read it, but I would like to say something impressed me most, I mean, the reaction of the eaters(the people at the table). They wanted to use the lighter to burn the strings, they suddenly realized that they were sewn by the strings and lose the freedom, they protested the lost of freedom, and they tried many ways to break the string net, and finally moved out from the table to get freedom, all this shows people’s eagerness to freedom. Also, as a seamstress, I find that the more they talk or the communication went on, the more constraint they got, so was that show the same as what the Chinese saying goes: “Don’t speak too much, since too much talk will bring you troubles”? However, people nowadays seem more like to fight against this kind of control rather than just surrender to it.
In fact, what tight the people together is not the string but their communication and friendship, that is really interesting.
