14.8cm x 21cm envelopes 4meters-high tree 6 hours documentation
in Lieshi Park, Furong, Changsha
17 Feb, 2021
Autumn
Rainer Maria Rilke
English Translation by Horst A. Scholz
The leaves are falling,
falling as from far,
As if far gardens in the skies were dying;
They’re falling with gestures of denial.
And in the nights the heavy earth is falling
From all the stars down into loneliness.
We are all falling. This hand falls.
And see the other ones; it is in them all.
And yet there is One, who holds this falling
Endlessly, gently in his hands.
This project investigates the temporal friction between impermanence and eternity, using a public installation to challenge anthropocentric perceptions of nature. By collecting the fallen leaves of a past autumn, sealing them in envelopes, and hanging them from a tall park tree in the ensuing spring, the work orchestrates a poignant temporal collision where two seasons coexist on a single living medium. Guided by the Japanese aesthetic philosophy of mono no aware and Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Ontology, the project deconstructs grand narratives in favor of a humble, Zen-like immediacy. As the spring wind disperses these "letters" of past autumn to passing pedestrians, the interactive act of opening them disrupts the viewer's static habit of looking at nature. The installation reveals that human observation is merely a one-sided projection, while the objects themselves constantly emerge, self-actualize, and coexist with us in a fluid, perpetual present.