Drifting Water

Drifting Water and Wishing Coins

Thames River Water, Lake Michigan Water, Pacific Ocean Water, Mediterrean Sea Water, Chinese Yuan, US Dollar, UK Ponds, Turkish Iira.
2022.4

In this project, I travel through America, Europe and Asia as an Asian woman carrying the Chinese Yuan, US Dollar, British Pound, Turkish Lira and ancient Greek coins, completing a closed loop of Asian-led currency circulation. Starting with the currency of the country I come from - the Chinese Yuan - I throw the currency of the last region I passed through into the rivers and lakes in a traditional Chinese superstitious ritual of throwing coins into a pool and making a wish: the Chinese Yuan into the Pacific Ocean from the United States, the US dollar into the Mediterranean Sea from Turkey, the ancient Greek currency into the Black Sea at the Eurasian border of Istanbul, the Turkish lira into the London Thames, and finally the pound into Lake Michigan in the US, closing the loop.

Throwing coins into wells, fountains and other pools to make wishes is a superstitious practice that is extremely popular in China and is an important part of traditional Chinese superstition, where people offer money in exchange for the blessing of the gods. By Mobilizing myself in different boarder, as a Chinese woman, through this way of travelling between Europe, Asia and America while displacing currency, I am using an extremely primitive superstitious act of using myself as a medium of circulation and drifting in a misplaced embodiment of coins in this neo-liberal era of European and American dominated globalisation. The subtle dislocation and alienation of my identity as an Asian in the context of globalisation.

At the same time I carry a 100ml bottle of water from one area and pour it into the next (Thames water into Lake Michigan, Lake Michigan water into the Pacific, Pacific water into the Mediterranean, Mediterranean water into the Thames), and a closed loop is formed. These sources of water would have been integrated as one, but it is our artificial distinction in structure. In this way, I want to rethink the way in which institutionalised structures encapsulate us as an abstract image. An identity that should not have been easily defined.

(I have not been back to my home country for three years due to the epidemic, and the choice of location for this closed loop represents the places I have travelled in my personal wanderings. I studied in Chicago and currently live in London, Turkey is the border between Asia and Europe, and the Pacific Ocean, where California is located, is the sea that separates China from the United States.)