Asia
Xin Liu
Living Distance
2020
Living Distance, 2020 (still)
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Living Distance by Xin Liu is a VR work and two-channel video based on a real mission in which the artist’s wisdom tooth was sent to outer space and back down to Earth again. In the VR work, users play the role of the tooth, journeying from the mouth to outer space, with a poetic narration by Liu. The piece is exquisitely rendered, with deep blacks that make the experience especially powerful on a Vive Pro. Eventually, the piece concludes that even in exceeding the envelope of the earth, one doesn’t actually leave gravity behind. Rather, in zero gravity orbit, everything falls toward the Earth at the same rate. What is achieved through the tooth‘s adventure isn’t escape or transcendence, but a new perspective, a new relationship with home.
Xin Liu’s work revolves around various ways of experiencing distance, and exploring the tension between personal experience and technological society. Trained as an engineer, she conducts scientific research that is infused with personal narrative, reconfiguring technological tools to offer unexpected affective experiences and artefacts. In one recent work, she performed a choreographed dance in a zero-gravity parabolic flight; in another, she sent her wisdom tooth to outer space on a private space mission. In works such as these, she uses complex technological systems to explore new experiences of the self. Her work’s technological sophistication and rigorous dedication to the personal and poetic yields new ways of understanding technological subjectivity.