FIELDWORK
CHAIR
AND
ACTIVE WAITING
The chair is the most common piece of furniture for rural Chinese families. It is also a spatial device that facilitates sitting — sitting down to eat; waiting for something, or someone; or playing cards by the side of the road. Although this act may seem mundane, it matters a great deal where one sits and for what. People tend to sit on and around spatial thresholds — that could be in their yard, at the gate or in front of the convenience store on the village street.
To an outsider, the sitting villagers may appear to be doing nothing more than having the occasional conversation with passing fellow villagers or neighbours. What they are actually doing is a form of ‘active waiting’, which enables them to be continuously attentive to others, anticipating negotiation, mediation and association. In other words, by pushing their own bodies to inhabit thresholds, these villagers are actively building up an elastic field of support and a sense of relatedness between themselves. This active waiting on a collective scale is fundamental to forming resilient assemblages of social and economic security that hinge on inter-generational and cross-household dependency, at the time when state welfare is insufficient and core family members are absent — and the chair is an essential tool for its practice.
To read about the ‘dinner set’, a cut-up assemblage piece made for Driving the Human festival, please see Chairs at the Table︎︎︎ at the Common Table.
To an outsider, the sitting villagers may appear to be doing nothing more than having the occasional conversation with passing fellow villagers or neighbours. What they are actually doing is a form of ‘active waiting’, which enables them to be continuously attentive to others, anticipating negotiation, mediation and association. In other words, by pushing their own bodies to inhabit thresholds, these villagers are actively building up an elastic field of support and a sense of relatedness between themselves. This active waiting on a collective scale is fundamental to forming resilient assemblages of social and economic security that hinge on inter-generational and cross-household dependency, at the time when state welfare is insufficient and core family members are absent — and the chair is an essential tool for its practice.
To read about the ‘dinner set’, a cut-up assemblage piece made for Driving the Human festival, please see Chairs at the Table︎︎︎ at the Common Table.
Waiting ChairsScenario in RIPPLE RIPPLE RIPPLING, 2022
Photographed by Chen Zhan
Children’s Game with Chairs
Scenario in RIPPLE RIPPLE RIPPLING, 2022
Filmed by Chen Zhan
ON THE MARGINS
Colour, Chinese, Eng subtitle, 12min, 2023
Co-directors: Jingru (Cyan) Cheng, Chen Zhan
Special thanks to Yizhuo Gao (2021–22) and Yunshi Zhou (2021)
for local filming support, and Laura Belinky (2021) for consultation.
DINNER SET
Exhibition installation
Driving the Human Festival, Berlin, Germany, 2021
Jingru (Cyan) Cheng & Chen Zhan
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