108 DAYS

sound installation
plastic bags, UV light, tonic water, speakers, motors
SYSTEM, Shanghai, China, 2023
Writing diaries became an act of survival during the Covid days.
How can these acts of witness be listened to and preserved in an age of forgetfulness?
108 bags of vibrating disquiet filled with whispered secrets, one bag for each day Shanghai was under lockdown.
Listeners are encouraged to listen closely to each bag, amidst the cacophony of collective disquiet.


performance,2023
SYSTEM, Shanghai, China
When the outside world comes to a halt, when day and night blurs together and all we have are our four bedroom walls——we find ourselves telling stories in order to go on living, making meaning out of our disparate, on-going moments.
“108 days” began with artist and poet JinJin Xu’s voice diaries recorded during the 108 days she spent at home during the pandemic. The audience is reminded of Scheherazade in One Thousand And One Nights, who does not know whether she will live to see the next day, only that by nightfall, she must tell another story.
“108 days” is a poetry installation: part-performance, part-sound poetry, an experiential allegory for the rooms we each find ourselves locked inside. The story goes like this: one day, a girl wakes up and finds herself unable to leave her room. She begins writing diaries——they float up in her room, aglow with her voice.
This is also a story about losing our memories on a journey into the afterlife, as the 108 days become an allegorical journey between the human realm and the afterlife, of the girl’s memories and life in suspension.