Thought on Metro Light Rail project 11-3, 2008
When I play J.S Bach’s Music, I am always amazed by his layers of interwoven threads of ideas, juxtaposition of motion, logical destiny, and intuitive surprise. I often think about life this way: the juxtaposition of unknown and the linkage of unfamiliarity. Although, we may eventually come to the light of understanding, it’s also possible that we may never be understood. These thoughts are all within a package—traveling through changing time and the context of movement. This is my threepenny thoughts regarding the Phoenix Light Rail project.
Being a foreigner both in the USA and my own birth country of China, public transportation is a perfect metaphor for my personal experience. We depart on a “moving compartment” and can simply ask, where is it from and where is it going? Who knows? As soon as we are at the point of boarding, we put ourselves in the condition of enclosure with many others whom we never know or meet. We are packaged and squeezed into each other. We are forced into intimacy of the unknown. We look at each other or we pretend not to look. The contrast between closeness and the unknown is fascinating. Then suddenly we are apart and maybe never see each other again. We are connected closely through a moving context of the unknown as we are weaving into each other by sheer chance before we move onto the next adventure. Our life is a tapestry of knowing and not knowing. We all have our own destiny, but we are unknowingly interacting and discovering our surprise in a form of juxtaposition while on our journey.
People often ask me why I use all of these meaningful words that no one can read in the actual artwork. First, I believe the artwork should go beyond the limitation of literary meaning. Secondly, I see that this is what our lives are about. We are all connected and integrated even without knowing. As stated in an old Chinese saying, “I am in yours as you are in mine.” The beauty is the ambiguity of existence of the unknown.