Go to the clearing of paths near the battery at Labrador Park at dusk and ascend the root of a tree departed; stay still breathing.
Significance:
How does it feel when muons pass through you? Muons originate from cosmic rays, travelling at relativistic speed across galaxies and from aeons past to arrive on Earth. Their material presence carries stories of beginnings. Muons’ subatomic structure slips through physicality. Every second, a muon passes through your palm. Every night, a million pass through your body.
I learnt about muons at the cusp of the pandemic outbreak. In the midst of experiencing an abrupt change of time-space, an acute sense of uncrossable distance and invisible presence, at a planetary scale, muons felt like science fiction. These impulses of cosmic longing, and the folding of distance and time, were explored in my work Path. 12, River Origin 浪淘沙* in 2021. Widjaja performed for the camera along Labrador Park at the southern coast of Singapore facing his hometown Java, and sensed, through his body, the arrival of muons with a custom muon tracker in my hands.
*Commissioned by BIO:ART Southeast Asia Taiwan, curated by Tang Fu Kuen, and supported by the National Arts Council Creation Grant and Exactly Foundation.