Phase #1
The Real Distances of Things Being Measured
That's when I created the first sculpture for Phase #1 of "Time Boomerang". I cast my hand, with fingers fully outstretched in my childhood measuring gesture, in metal.
Once completed, I cut off the five fingertips and moved them away from the hand, symbolically extending my ability to measure — or mark — new territories. These five places could be five corners of a museum, a university campus, a country, a continent, five continents of the Earth, five places in a Galaxy, or five separate Galaxies and so on.
With "Time Boomerang", I wish to elevate a regional conflict onto a vast context of time and space where mediated dialogues can take place without impassioned fistfights based on heated patriotism. Over a period of several years, I had and have continued to launch the five fingertips in five oceans corresponding to five different continents.
My handcast and its five fingertips, presented in a plexiglass box. The hand is touching the Earth map of the present (2026), the wrist punctured the Earth map of 150 million years into the future. The top map is 250 million years into the future and the bottom is 650 million years ago.
Phase #2
The New Conqueror with a Good Passport
In Phase #2, I set out to launching my five fingertips into the 5 corresponding oceans of Earth's five continents — hence 5 Parts.
Part 1 of 5: Europe
On the 22nd of September 2015, I traveled from Viet Nam to Sweden to launch the first of the five fingertips into the Gulf of Bothnia. This performance happened during "Time Boomerang"'s Phase #1 was exhibiting at Bildmuseet Museum. The European performance is the first of 5 parts of Phase #2 in the "Miền Méo Miệng" exhibition.
Launching the 1st fingertip into the Gulf of Bothnia. (Photo – Polly Yassin)
Recorded GPS map traveling to dropping Europe zone.
