Ou was critical of a rigid view that believes that, if you accept free advertising from a company, for example, it betokens an obligation to communicate: to respond to e-mails, fulfill deadlines and show up as promised being typical example of such an inflexible system.
"Social engineering, also described by Joseph Beuys as 'Social Sculpture,' is not meant to stay at the rigid material world, but also be involved in the political, economic, cultural and other social 'software.'"
Perhaps it's a matter of 'abstainability' rather than sustainability, Liu said - a concept that's something Ou certainly knows about.
"[It's about] organizing existing matters in a way that accept gaps as moments of recess, rather than quickly producing more to fill them in," she explained. "We can let our waterfront flood and enjoy the fertile habitat of the wetland."
Hopeful future?
Liu was educated in China, Japan, the UK and the US and worked at New York firm Kohn Pedersen Fox and Starwood prior to founding SO-IL (Solid Objectives-Idenburg Liu) with Florian Idenburg.
Her design with SO-IL, Pollination, is a truck hauling a small park. "This truck will wander around Chengdu. People can freely get on and take control of the spraying machine, to spread the seeds everywhere in the over-developed and too-urbanized city," she explained. "It's a romantic design."
Matt Hope's People's Power Station utilized a suite of standard Chinese public-exercise equipment with electric mechanical capture devices to harness kinetic energy of users and create outdoor lighting.
"People's Power Station demands the participation and interaction of the public in order to keep running," Hope explained. "This gear-train drives a drum of rare earth magnets that brush by coils of copper wire spinning at nine times per second... thereby producing a rotating electromagnetic field that induces a rhythmic pulse of electrons to flow down connecting wires.
"This AC electrical charge terminates between an anode and cathode, resulting in a barrage of photons that bombard a nearby viewer with trillions of sub-atomic light particles."
"The tendency of design grows even stronger since the birth of Internet," Ou concluded.
"Design is the strategy and solution to pressing social issues. It will achieve real autonomy in the exploration of 'Tao,' the highest spiritual principle," Ou said, neglecting to immediately make clear how one reconciles that with fecklessness. Despite this omission, Tao remains both the Chinese title of the exhibit - and its crucial theme.
Source: Global Times
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