The Glass Beads Trail

“The society is progressing at a run-away pace, like an express train...We launch these trains without installing a breaking system.” This quote comes from an interview with artist Lijun Fang, which shows a fact that our world is in an irreversible process, especially in industrial field. In these two decades, according to World Bank, the world’s industry value added has increased 17.76 trillion dollars. Billions of people benefit from it. However, everyone ignore some disadvantages of such rapid industrial development. The most dangerous of these is the smog, which not only decrease the visibility of sky, but also lead to a series of respiratory diseases. For example, in 2013, severe air pollution episodes emerged in the middle and eastern China, which caused a number of flights were cancelled and the growth of the general incidence of bronchitis, pneumonia, upper respiratory tract infection. In this project, I chose glass beads to represent stars, man-made stars, which was produced by modern industry. Then I put them in a blue sky’s print which simulated industrial gases sheltered the sky and stars. Finally I put my works in a factory which near my home, to remind people the relationship between human and environment. However I did not get the permission from the factory, so I took photos for them in the wasteland behind the factory. We have responsibility to return the clear sky to the nature, which is beneficial to human beings. Only by properly handling the relationship with nature can human beings be able to continue their civilization.