The chair is an everyday object, so everyday that it is often overlooked. So when Midoriko, a girl living in Shanghai, first created a submission account called "chair bot" on the Internet, many people would be puzzled: "Why open a bot for chairs?" ”
Midoriko said that as humans who spend 30% of the day working and studying in chairs, our bodies are more closely connected to chairs than we can imagine. In her view, the chair supports the foundation of our living, working and studying, and also forms an invisible space around it.
In the space of two years, "Chairbot" received thousands of submissions. Through thousands of chairs from different cities, Midoriko sees different fragments of life: the chair is an old companion who accompanies a person through long winter nights in the park, and it is also a gathering place for family gatherings, and a chair is like a book, opening up a life with different textures. Midoriko said that each chair is the beginning of a story, a narration when people laugh, cry, and worry. Like a tree hole on the Internet, the "chair bot" not only records the chairs around us, but also writes about the diversity of man and nature, and collects those small and moving moments in life.
The following is the self-report of Midoriko, the owner of the "chair bot".
textMidoriko
Edited by Feiyu Wong
Chairs that grow in the fabric of the city
The starting point of my observation of chairs can be traced back to the Spring Festival of 2021. I stumbled upon a chair next to a hot pot restaurant on the street of my hometown that was emitting sunset spots on the surface. Just as I was about to marvel at the beauty of the combination of nature and man-made objects, a green bus passed by the side of the road with a line printed on the front of the bus: Virtue is the foundation of life. This wonderful combination of moments has been deeply imprinted in my mind ever since, and it is also like a portal to another time and space in a parallel world.
Since then, I've started posting on Weibo about some of the chairs I came across on the road: the ones used to dry red beans downstairs in the dormitory, the ones in front of the fruit shop, and the ...... discarded by the trash cans during a night walkIt's all a daily record of my life, without any symbolic expression.
In February 2022, I moved from Shanghai to Hangzhou, where I interned at a major internet company and lived in the suburbs. The mechanized working atmosphere and monotonous life made me depressed, and I decided to seriously operate the "chair bot", which can be regarded as a communication practice.
Midoriko's first photographed chair.
*: Chair bot
The word "bot" is derived from the English robot (robot), which first refers to tweets on a certain topic that are controlled by automated programs and published according to preset rules, and later became a theme posting network culture. In my imagination, "bots" and chairs are both objects that are used by people, and people give them different states and ways of behaving. The positioning of "Chair Bot" is a content platform that uses chairs as a medium to build a connection between people and all things, and uses chairs to communicate with the world. I think that using a chair as an intermediary to stay connected with people can also help contributors focus more on the content of the conversation, reduce social anxiety, and make it easier to face a chair than to face a person.
Starting from March 2022, I held the "Spring Chair"** submission activity on the "chair bot", and I harvested the first batch of "chair friends". With the operation of the account, the group of "chair friends" has gradually spread and grown, and more and more submissions have appeared that make my eyes shine: the long queue of chairs used by Xinjiang Yili to queue for nucleic acid testing, and the empty chairs wait for people to pass by in the early morning; In a semi-open shop in Shanghai locked by an iron door, spring grass rises from the soil beneath a recliner; In the sun, kittens curled up on benches in Melbourne Park and reading to the light; In European restaurants, chairs like scattered fruit candy wrappers; On an ancient island, the plants wrapped around the chairs outline the shape of time with branches.
Chair bot" wonderful chair not exactly big prize.
*: Chair bot
A chair reflects life in different geographies
The observation of the chair is like a viewfinder for everyday life, and I have collected submissions from different regions and in various forms, as well as projects related to chairs around the world. From these chairs, I saw the life of different geographical civilizations.
Matteo Guarnaccia, a designer from Sicily, Italy, has launched a project called "Cross Cultural Chairs". He travels to the top eight most populous countries in the world, collaborates with local designers, and goes through a long cycle to create chairs that are culturally appropriate.
Different chairs are designed in different cultural contexts.
*：cross cultural chairs
For example, a chair with a Japanese designer does not have four legs, because for a long time, Japanese people have used to sitting on the floor. This concept is influenced by religious thought, as well as the subtle subtlety of the traditional Japanese view of man and nature. Architect Kengo Kuma said, "In Japan, flooring defines people's living space and the relationship between humans and nature. In such a tradition, the boundaries between space and furniture are blurred, and chairs become part of the space, outlining the "inner space" with privacy, which is part of the national character.
A chair without legs – suitable for Japanese people who are used to sitting on the floor.
*：cross cultural chairs
In Cairo, the distant capital of Egypt, photographer Manar Moursi used a Polaroid to record chairs on the streets. These street chairs are like shimmering ores, with the burning heat and divinity of the desert country. These people who are obsessed with chairs and feel the deep culture and beauty of the poetry in the chairs collect chairs as if they were collecting poetry books.
The chairs on the streets of Cairo bring their own divinity from the mysterious desert country.
*：domus
One day, I found a sculptural installation of green elve-like with an open mouth, laid out with Mesopotamia-style mosaic tiles nested in a bench. I posted this cute ** on Weibo as part of the collection. It wasn't long before "chair friend" Ri Jing privately messaged me that she had photographed the same bench in Park Landscape Alley, the capital of Ukraine. She then shared more photos taken in that park, which featured many local artists' creations based on public facilities: benches, slides, swings, and the dividing wall of the functional area, full of abstract-style public installations. In this park, adjacent to St. Andrew's Church and the Kyiv Historical Museum, I saw the daily life of people, but also the human moments in the city. It is no exaggeration to say that from this chair I felt the beauty and temperature of this land in Kiev.
Pass through a few chairs and feel the human atmosphere of Kiev.
*: Chair bot
Both inside and outside the chair, there are a lot of topics
Why is it called a "chair bot" and not a "seat bot"? In my mind, there is a strict distinction between "chairs" and "seats": seats are strongly bound to space and place, and cinemas, classrooms, and train carriages ......The position, orientation, and perspective of the seats in these spaces are fixed; The chair is flexible and free, and will also move according to different scenes and events. So in my opinion, the chair is a functional object and a medium, in the words of Marshall McLuhanThe medium is an extension of the human body, and the chair is also an extension of the human body as an "organ" for rest.
As I observed, I came to realize that it wasn't the chairs we set up that served as the organs for rest; Not all chairs are for people, either. Masayuki Kurokawa said in "The Chair and the Body" that "sitting" was first associated with the earth, and the earth was the original chair. A dusty chair in Beijing's hutongs, still favored by the wind-blown acacia flowers, seems to have become part of the environment. These old, discarded chairs also provide a short-lived roof for the city's stray cats and dogs. The benches in the city park are not only places for humans to rest, but also places for birds, insects, plants to inhabit and share the city with humans.
Chairs are not just places for humans to rest.
It is also a place where birds, insects, and plants inhabit.
*: Chair bot
Once, a chair friend asked me if I was male or female as "under the skin". Do chairs have a gender too? I started thinking about it. From a material point of view, the chair certainly does not have gender attributes, but from many aspects such as functionality and social etiquette, the chair cannot be separated from the binary gender distinction of this world.
In Victorian England, women's chairs were often smaller and lower than men's chairs, some even without armrests, and the back of the chair was tilted forward to prevent women's tight underwear from touching the back. There are also dragon chairs and throne rules, which symbolize power and authority. From the word "chairman" in English, we can also see the connection between the chair and identity and gender.
British designer Laila Laurel has designed a set of chairs called "A Solution for Man-spreading". Man-spreading is a public phenomenon that many people complain about. In many public spaces, men tend to spread their legs too far and even encroach on other people's seating space. Laila Laurel herself observed this while riding the subway. She designed two chairs: the trapezoidal chair because of the protruding wooden block in front of it, so that the person sitting on it can naturally spread his legs; The inverted trapezoidal chair has long wooden strips protruding from the edges, so the person sitting on it naturally has to close their legs together. Naturally, the chairs are not widely promoted, but Laila Laurel sees them as an important way to discuss spatial issues and challenge gender inequality.
Laila Laurel discusses gender inequality through the design of her chair.
*：dezeen
These chair designs related to social issues have also broadened my understanding of chairs. Human beings spend 30% of their time in chairs, so the connection between the body and the chair is far beyond imagination, and the chair also contains many issues.
In May this year, Chair Bot and Duoduo Phenomenon Studio held the first offline workshop "Chair Lianliankan". Among the 16 participants was a girl named Wang Meiyu. She is a high school art teacher, an art worker, and a mother. She switched perspectives between different social identities and made a three-dimensional chair zine (magazine book). The disciplined identity, the balance of work and motherhood, the time of disappearance, and the ...... of personal willThese settings are superimposed and evolved into this "chair" that can't sit down. At this moment, the chair is not only a medium for human expression, but also a medium for self-expression.
This "chair" that cannot sit down has become a medium for self-expression.
*: Chair bot
The workshop compiled a walking guide for the purpose of finding chairs, marking the chair-prone areas and chair-hiding areas in Shanghai. In Shanghai's alleys or older neighborhoods, such as Caoyang Village, there are a lot of random chairs. From my personal subconscious, where there are more chairs on the street, people's pace of life will be relatively slow, because the presence of chairs seems to leave people with the opportunity to sit down and linger, chat in a daze. In a modern, urban area like Lujiazui, the streets are relatively clean, and you won't see similar chairs, just like the highway in the city, where people are speeding around.
Chair Lianliankan" workshop compilation.
*: Chair bot
During the walks organized by the workshop, we experienced the different attitudes of the residents. Some residents are very wary of our "eccentric" observations, always keeping an eye on our advance and retreat, as if their own borders have been "invaded"; But there are also uncles who enthusiastically introduce us to interesting things in the alley. This walk gave me an intuitive sense of the boundaries of the city.
Chair friend "Tooth Stem" has contributed his project "anything you need is a seat" to "Chair Bot". She categorized the chairs she observed on the roadside, some of which could be sat down at will, some of which belonged to businesses that required seating, and some of which belonged to residential houses on the side of the street. In the process of observation and classification, she wondered whether the owner of the chair was willing to accept an outsider. The boundary between public and private on the side of the street is blurred by the state of the chairs, and whether or not they can "sit down" has become a key issue.
Those chairs placed on the side of the street are the places where stories take place.
*: Chair bot
In "Tokyo Style," Japanese photographer and editor Hibiki Tsukuri once documented a group of artists who wanted to shoot a film in a shopping street, and asked the owner of each shop to take out their own chairs to shoot, and the chairs became a medium to bring each other closer together. Cong Zhiqiang, an associate professor at the School of Art at Chinese University, also conducted an artistic transformation experiment in Gejia Village in Ninghai, Zhejiang. At first, he invited villagers to attend lectures and workshops, but only 26 people from a village of 1,600 people came to his lectures. The renovation could not go any further, so he built a chair out of stone and bamboo in the area of the old ancestral hall and the small supermarket. Miraculously happened, the chairs were finished, and before they could be cleaned, people crowded on them, and people who came and went selling needles and threads even set up stalls next to the chairs - a chair created a new public space.
The chair serves as a symbol that connects strangers
Because of the operation of the "chair bot", I have met a lot of friends online and offline. For example, a "chair friend" layla who lives and works in Beijing. She started documenting chairs in 2020, and in May of this year, she even held a pop-up exhibition of chairs.
In her opinion, the chair is her unique way of looking at the city, and when there is a specific gaze point, the observation of the street becomes more focused. She refers to two chairs of the same color as "chair romance", and the chairs are close to each other as if lovers are whispering, and the distance between people in urban life is also expressed through the gestures of the chairs. Creasing, wearing, reconstruction, ......The traces on the used chair also reflect the thickness of people's lives and existence.
Chair Friends "layiiia's pop-up exhibition for chairs.
*：layiiia
There is also a "chair friend" Yang Zuo, who observed that there are many elderly people downstairs in the community who will sit around and talk together after dinner. They talk about tomorrow's weather, the cheaper fruits and vegetables in the neighborhood, and these public chairs carry an important part of the retirement life of the elderly, and also build a small community.
The public chairs downstairs in the community carry the retirement life of the elderly.
*: Made by sheep. Chair bot" has a column called "chair**", the so-called "chair**", the definition I give is that after hearing it, the whole person is like sitting on a chair to rest, and feel relaxed and happy**. Because I like it, I try to find a connection between the chair and the chair, and also explore the possibility of using the chair as a medium to connect people. Later I found my answer - the classic game "Grab the Chair".
On July 9 of this year, "Chair Bot" collaborated with a record store in Suzhou called "Spin'n'sit". "Spin" has the meaning of vinyl**, and people circling around the chair are also "spin". I replaced the traditional percussion sound in the previous robbery game with **, and with *** or pause, the chair friends from afar paced around the chair, circled, listened attentively, and focused their attention on ** and the chair. In the laughter and the rhythm of the exchange, I felt part of a collective that acted together.
In the "spin'n'SIT" activity, which combines chair grabbing games with **.
*: Chair bot
"Chair bot" has gained a lot of attention this year. This may be the product of the lack of focus in people's lives in the past two years, and the restrictions on the right of movement have been lifted, and people who have returned to the streets cherish every grass and tree that appears in front of them. Just as Sartre said, "the world is the gaze", even the rattling branches, half-open windows, or slightly fluttering curtains are understood as gaze. The chair in flux and change is also a beam of attention cast by the world.
Perhaps, the "chair bot", like the citywalk in the city, also represents an anti-consumerist way of life - which is also advocated by on-the-road observation. When I observe on the street, I also pay more attention to the chairs on the street that break out of the ordinary order and have a lot of imagination and white space. They are generally perfectly integrated in the neighborhood, with traces of life. I believe,Spreading such chairs is not only conveying an anti-consumerist attitude, but also drawing more attention to what is happening in the cracks of the city.
When writing the introduction to the "chair bot", I wrote down a phrase: more than chairs. The more I observed and recorded the chairs, the more I felt that the "chair friends" had woven a network through the dissemination of chair symbols. This kind of communication and sharing produces a "sense of presence" and helps us build an imaginary community. Ballroom dancing, backs waiting outside the library, empty seats in family portraits, and ...... bosses with unsalable physical booksThese images with chairs are like a movie, frame by frame of our shared life experience, and as long as you see these chairs, I think everyone has familiar memory fragments in their minds.