The Traveling Plant: Preparatory Logbook

Iris Long

Beijing, China
Curator, Researcher on Art, Science and Technology, Central Academy of Fine Arts

An exceptionally long summer exhausts all, in their respective physical and emotional cells. Exhaustion transforms into nutrition, not to the homo sapiens, but to the plantation.

An exceptionally moist summer exhausts, indulges, and lures me. Why’d you come, at this checkpoint of space-time? No coordinates were marked, no rehearsal was conducted, the plant just arrives – I never saw it landing, I heard it, just like the world hears the outburst cry of a newborn.

Beijing is never an easy place to survive, I’m glad that you are taking slow and subtle steps – if “step” is the right word? We’re so distant from naturalists’ time that we even lack the capabilities to tell the difference between plum blossom and sakura. But dear plant, I need to know your name – the scientific one, and the legendary ones.

How could I possibly cross the labyrinth ring-roads and the steel structures, or zigzag in the Hutongs, without hurting you? I used to cycle around the city on the fourth ring road, it took me nearly eight hours. That’s the scale of the city. Could you feel the scale of time in the same way, by letting it cycling within you?

After all, I navigate in space, and you navigate in time.