The temporal nature of space seems to have been the subject of art, design and even academic research by the United States Multimedia Designer, Dustar (Xingying Du). Dustar is based in New York and has a multidisciplinary background, including historical protection, building sustainable design and indoor design, and is now working as a designer at the New York headquarters of the United States-owned Licorne WeWork. This year, she will host an individual design exhibit at home, after which we conducted a special mission:

As a new designer, you have a very diverse background, and how do you look at this multiplicity of backgrounds?

Dou: First of all, I do not feel that this is an truce, and I feel that my background has always been in space design, and I have followed the issue of time. Contemporary societies are rapidly developing, people lack a sense of security, and people are less indifference than men. This makes old objects, a memories of the past; sharing, a potential social opportunity, becomes particularly profound and embarrassing. It seems to me that the historical protection research and practice that has been carried out in the early years is the protection and use of spaces that have existed in the past in the current time; the shared space design that I are now engaged in is the design of the same space over time. It is time-to-space-related, but a different measure.

“The shadow/space-to-space”, concept sketchy, Dustar

In addition to a number of large engineering projects, you are often involved in the design of a number of artefacts, followed by exhibitions, design exhibits, and how do you reflect the timing of art devices?

Dou: I think that the first thing of time lies in its eternal and immutable changes — when we think we are doing it is now. For example, in 2016 I participated in the design of the art device “The shadow/space-to-space” (Poché/The Space Between), which was exhibited at the SOFA Expo in Chicago (SOFA EXPO, NAVY PIER, Chicago). In designing the Panel’s decision to act as a filling device, I have made it clear that a mix of filling devices is to be combined with spatial and temporal blurring attributes. In my view, the beauty of the filling device lies in its form, which can change over time — either slowly or expediently, or at veiling or leaking. Space interacts with people, or is intimately or alienated, in the process of filling, leaking gas, and is highly dynamic and interactive. The integration of the concept of art into space, that is, the concept of convergence, is ultimately extended to the shadow of the building (Poché), which is, in fact, the relationship between the real space and the negative space in what we usually say.

2016 Field of the Chicago SOFA Fair

“The shadow/space-to-space”, exhibit site

In addition, the cumulative feature of temporality is that space is process-oriented and subject to qualitative change. For example, when I was previously engaged in protection work, a time-bound city was emerging and a spatial process was in place. The journey of an art device, which I participated in in New York in the previous year — coincides with each other” (Journeys: Disconnected - Reconnected), is a multi-media story that has occurred on different time lines in a similar practice. This project was inspired by the story of Hart Island, New York. The Island is a public cemetery for the burial of more than 1 million unidentified bodies in the city of Bronx. All the dead were buried permanently in the house without any identity. This is a tragic story. Of the millions who have died, I have chosen to focus on the migrant population of the deceased, those who, like me, “foreigners” who have come to the United States for a better life and who have left behind. Each colour wire represents a life that has existed in the past, and they come to New York from their home countries to try to realize their own “United States dream”, while each independent individual will have separate migration processes, all of which will eventually be tragically buried on the Island of Hart - without names, without identity and without recognition.

“Travel-Singling” (“Journeys: Disconnected- Reconnected”) New York, Pratt Manhattan Gallery

My reading of Mr. R. R. R. Recapita’s memory is impressive: the tragedy is the destruction of good things to people. This sentence gives me a great sense of inspiration in the artistic creation of the “trip”: a “good” nightmare — on the future — has been broken through the exchange of colour wires. Numerous illusions of a better person’s time-cluster that cut across spaces often relapse into a single island - all of the wires entangled and undisputed. It is commonal and brutal.

What are the benefits associated with the arts in the rest of the work, in addition to the design work itself?

I will carry out a number of pamphlets, which are purely personal. It will also be published in some media, and most of my stories are time and space. For example, the “naturally living in abandoned homes” (Nature reclaims an abandoned house, 2017) painted a large tree that thrives in an abandoned old house, with a branding of windows and smoke. We in humanity have abandoned our house and are naturally not. This may be the result of years of historical protection. A house, valuable not only in itself, but also in its memories of time. We should pay greater attention to the protection of historical legacy. There are also, of course, some more positive works, “infrared not merciless, simplified in springs” (The fallen leaves, in return, will transform into transformative into irreconceivable.