Stream of Mine, Valley of Yours
2020, Taiwan/NL. Film, Installation
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.
—I. Song of Myself (1892 version)
BY WALT WHITMAN
No container hold the sea;
No sounding machine penetrate the earth;
No textbook talk to big trees;
No rocket approach the sun;
No space define clouds;
Powerful forces exist in nature.
There is no artificial others can measure nor replace.
Our body also belongs to nature.
If you don't resist.
If you listen intently, harmony of all things is in your body.
Windy and watery.
There is fire.
And there is earth.
Reflected by current dominant sick-care system that is based around hospitals and medicine, this project developed speculative holistic healthcare system with help from nature and mind. With five elements in Traditional Chinese Medicine as background knowledge, five onsite nature locations in Taiwan are chosen by designer to develop guided meditative activities and tools. Each space is associated with one element, a main organ, a sense, an emotion, and suggested movement. Nature as healer, and our mind as the guide. Water, Wood, Fire, Earth and Metal. It’s an ongoing training to see our body with holistic view. As we do so, we are no longer patients to a doctor, but responsible to our own. Also, to see the connection of our own body and the natural elements is to build a more respectful and interactive way to experience nature. Since the beginning, we have been given with everything around and within us. We are in a bigger self, an organic, unseparated one.