Handwriting

As a part of the installation project, The Room He Lived In (2026), I gave myself the task of writing 11 letters. These letters are to be written on steel sheets, which will then be etched, leaving a faint memory of the text but not so easily readable.

As for the content of the letter, I dug up some texts that I've written in my phone, things that vaguely relate to the feeling of missing someone. However I couldn't make it to 11. After carefully writing a few of the letters with my best effort to make them readable, I soon run out of content to write. I stare at the steel sheets in front of me, blankly.

It is said that the effort of handwriting letters nowadays is almost a test for endurance; both physically (to fight your sore arm and hand), and mentally (to fight your impatience and desire to scroll instagram). In this regard, I am overachieving in this test - by not using a pen (such luxurious modern technology!), but rather to use a brush, dipping it in nail polish and painting the text on steel. It is such a pain. The stickiness and quick-drying nature of nail polish are definitely not designed for writing, nor is my cheap brush from Temu.

This method is taking so long, to the extent that it no longer feels like writing, but rather painting. I recall reading about the concept of "asemic writing" - where letters resemble writing but carry no literal, semantic meaning; they are visual form that carry particular emotion. I guess drawing and writing are the same thing if we go way back in time. What is this "meaning" anyway? Isn't the semantic meaning of words an invented division by gods to separate us?

I pick up the brush and start writing again. This time I no longer insist on coping a particular text, or on making whatever I write readable. My thoughts wonder, and my hand is becoming liberal. Handwriting has always given me the frustration of my hand cannot be keep up with my mind; but now, through this abandonment of meanings, and the expectation for words to be understood, suddenly the words flow at a synchronized pace as mind.

About an hour later, I fill all 11 steel sheets that I have available. I look at them and think, perhaps the text is less a message, but a texture?

Carefully written/painted words

When one no longer cares if the text is readable. Thoughts flow better when you write like this.

Result after etching. I think what I wrote there in the last paragraph in was:

一封没写完的信又如何呢

除了此时此刻的我

谁也看不懂

写完便忘了

是一个只有当下流淌的思绪

未来不会有人破译的密码

English translation:

So what if it's an unfinished letter?

No one can read it

Apart from myself, in this very moment only

Forgotten, as soon as they are written

They are flowing thoughts in the present time

A code that will never be decrypted from the future