In this work, I threw myself into the environment which I wished to build connection to, in this case was the dark gallery space. I lied down on the floor of gallery space and stay there no doing anything but breath, for as long as I can. This process is universal but same time specific according to different place or landscape. The gallery is a relatively neutral space which makes this practice almost like meditation, also emphasizes on the process itself. The process of calming takes time. I can’t reach quiescence unless I don’t do anything. I have to de-function myself in every way until I have waited long enough. When I think about Nan Shepherd’s word “to govern the stops of the instrument,” I realize that govern means the ability to retreat my own thoughts and release my senses. The perception does not come from the centre of my mind, on the contrary, it comes from every ends of my nerves.

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Restriction is the point to the execution in both self-practice projects. When I was lying on the floor, or filming the salmon ladder, I couldn’t even move a little. I started estimating how long it had passed. After a while, I lost the sense of time. I knew it was unlikely to have anything happened, the only thing I was expecting is the end. Waiting is a passive action; it is an action to let time pass through, but it doesn’t mean nothing changed. Everything is changing during the whole time regardless inner or outer, and waiting is my probe to make it emerge. At last, “When can I stop?” became the ultimate question of whole process. During waiting, I was in fact making decision at every single moment, and I never knew at which moment I would finally yield. The act of waiting is to find a point that would change the original status of waiting, to end the status of waiting, or to initiate a new segment of waiting.