Permanent Project
2019
Permanent started on a laser cut experiment and turned into a project by accident. Out of curiosity, I playfully laser cut an apple with the etching PERMANENT. The finishing turned out to be beautiful and clean, and the ironic statement of PERMANENT on a rotting fruit made it more interesting for me to carry on with this piece.
I planned to document the change of it overtime, to see how permanency decays. But I was about to go on a trip to Europe at that time, so I put it on a public table at school and left a note to ask people to send me a photo when they see it. It was really satisfying when I received emails of the apple photos and people telling me how much they loved this idea.
12 days later, I came back to New York. The first thing I did was going to where I left the apple at. Surprisingly, or maybe not, the apple was gone. I had no interest in investigating the missing apple case, for I knew it's going to be gone sooner or later, just a matter of time. Nothing is permanent.
With the documentation photos, I made a zine PERMANENT BOOK to record the extremely short life cycle of the permanent apple, as a closure to say goodbye , and as gratitude to those who contributed in the documentation.
Additionally, I 3D-printed an apple and engraved the same PERMANENT on it as a substitute of the original one. This one made with solid material and high tech is going to live a long life, hopefully.
At last, I ended it with a question: When permanent is absent, what becomes permanent?
