Doria Zhu

Minimal Archive: Copy of an Impression

My gut is like a second brain, silently holding memories tied to certain foods. When I pay close attention, I can almost find myself immersed in that nostalgic atmosphere. Sometimes, a thin, elusive memory wraps around me, drawing me in with an irresistible pull, ephemeral yet tangible, unfolding through my “kinesthetic memory”: a gesture of making.¹ By potting, throwing, hand-building, and shaping clay, I engage in a transgenerational experience in which the ceramics serve as an archive of remembrance.

Our pursuit to understand the purpose of our existence drives us to seek our origins. “It is to chase the archive where something within it archives itself.”² My body of work combines ceramics with motion-capture programming in the concept of “Ancestrofuturism”.³ Movements are captured and archived in real-time, while the glazed Paichar (排叉儿, a traditional Chinese fried snack) taught by my Grandma are retrieved from my embodied memories. This is a journey into future archaeology, a space where past and future converge, encouraging a reimagined connection between perception and ever-evolving dimensions of virtual and physical environments.

_{1. Samudra, Jaida Kim.  "Memory in Our Body: Thick Participatory and the Translation of Kinesthetic Experience," American Ethnologist, 35, no.4, 2008.}

_{2. Derrida, Jacques. Archive fever: A Freudian impression. University of Chicago Press, 1996.}

_{3. Borges, F., and M. Fragoso. “Ancestrofuturism: Ancestralities and Technoshamanism.” 2015.}