Writing the Future

The climate crisis is a constant concern, but many people are still doing nothing about it. After researching and thinking about it, I realised that not everyone has a strong sense of environmental awareness and that people still think that the climate crisis is a national issue, far away from them. So I wanted to use a medium that people could easily access as an entry point to create my artwork. And when I found many elderly people writing on the ground while walking around West Lake, I realised that this was exactly the direction I was looking for, that I could use calligraphy, a traditional Chinese writing style, as a starting point for my project and combine it with contemporary art, creating a dialogue and exchange between the traditional and the contemporary. So I used the process of writing on the paper with water over and over again and eventually returning to the original point in my project as a metaphor for the way human is trying to remedy the climate crisis, even if we do something, it still doesn't help, repeatedly making amends, but still no response, and as a warning to us to think about the environmental issues.

I actually encountered a lot of problems throughout the process, from the content of the writing, the typeface to the methods and angle of the shot. The content and the font were the biggest problems I encountered. In terms of content, at first I chose a record of letters between ancient people, which were also related to water, but I felt that it did not reflect the serious problem of the lack of fresh water resources due to the change in temperature. So after some research I chose a small part of the Shui Jing Zhu, because it is one of the most comprehensive books on rivers in ancient China. Now, due to changes in temperature and the melting of snow and ice in the mountains, some rivers no longer exist or have become rivers in some areas. Just as warmer temperatures make water more scarce in arid areas, or melting glaciers cause sea levels to rise, which can put people at risk of flooding. In terms of writing fonts, I originally chose the Kaishu, which is the most basic of all Chinese calligraphy, but as this font takes a lot of time to write with a large number of strokes and may not give a good effect, I finally opted for the Xingkai, which is a typeface between the Kaishu and the Xingshu, it does not take as much time as the Kaishu and it does not make it as difficult for the audience to understand what is written as the Xingkai. In other words, the "Xingkai" allows the audience to understand the meaning of the content and gives a relatively good effect.

In conclusion, although it achieved what I wanted to present, I wasn't particularly happy with the filming and editing due to time constraints. However, it did allow me to have some amazing experiences, such as trying to present my work in video form for the first time and learning how to shoot and edit for the first time. This has also inspired me to experiment with new mediums and blend different cultural elements in my subsequent work.