Poetics of Preservation
2022 ~ 2023
Social Experiment + Participatory Installation + Experimental Film
Partly funded by the U.S. Consulate Public Affairs Section
HART Haus, Hong Kong
The Poetics of Preservation addressed how the value of sentimental objects is retained, lost, or transformed by being entombed in resin. We invited 14 Hong Kong residents to introduce subjectively valuable/sentimental objects from their past. Together, we witnessed the telling of small stories. These stories centered on participants’ motivations to simultaneously preserve yet separate themselves from their objects by entombing them in a block of resin.
This year-long socially engaged project had three parts:
In Part 1, the participants brought in their sentimental objects, shared their stories,
and initiated the resin entombing workshop.
This year-long socially engaged project had three parts:
In Part 1, the participants brought in their sentimental objects, shared their stories,
and initiated the resin entombing workshop.
In Part 2, they reencountered their objects fully entombed in resin and celebrated the transformed objects by conversing with experts. The small panel of experts from various domains in the USA and Hong Kong commented and provoked questions on the value of the object, the experience of preserving/sharing, or even the potential for empathic understanding across time and shifting cultural norms.
Between Part 2 and Part 3, casual meetings occurred between The Buoy and participants.
In these meetings, the resin cubes were sanded together to give each participant an acquaintance with their object in a different form.
Part 3 enacted an installation composed of resin cubes in their anticipated settings.
Each cube was situated in accordance with the descriptions of the participants, such as
“on the shelf in mom’s living room”, “under the bed”, “next to plants on a balcony”, etc.
Evidencing inclusion by design, some participants designed and manufactured settings for their own cubes and contributed to decision-making within the larger installation.
Inspired by the American television show, “Antiques Roadshow”, an experimental film correspondingly titled “The Poetics of Preservation” occurred in a conjoining room.
The film is based on Part 2 of the project. When screened, it provided another space for participants to witness public reactions to their shared experiences of losing a treasured object while gaining a cube.
