Since the June of 2010 till now, I have been working on Shoes Walking Project. The concept of the work is to document the life of a pair of shoes with the help of ATM machines. In the beginning, I bought a new pair of shoes for the project and scanned the soles. I never wore the shoes in any other occasions except for the project. The second step was to open an account at Taiwan Cooperative Bank’s branch in Kaohsiung, on Mintsu Road and deposited 1001 NTD in the account. Meanwhile, I asked a friend in Taipei to open an account at Taiwan Cooperative Bank’s branch in Taipei and deposited 1000 NTD in that account. Both my friend and I applied for an ATM card. After everything was all set, I started the repetitive journey to walk to the bank to transfer 1 NTD via the ATM machine at the bank on Mintsu Road and to walk back home.

The distance between the bank and my home is 2.5 kilometers, so the round-trip is 5 kilometers. I have to walk 100 kilometers to transfer the money 20 times. The plan is that every time when I finish walking 100 kilometers, I will scan the soles again until the shoes are broken. The images of the shoes being worn down and the bankbooks of the two accounts will be made into the document of the performance art project. I am expecting to spend three years to wear down the shoes, bringing the project to an end.

Shoes are like brothers to me, or my best friends, for that we visit every place together and we spend a lot of time with each other. The shoes mentioned above are being worn down as a metaphor of the meaningless pursuit of life no matter how much effort we have made. It is the ephemerality of life that “the shoes leave no footprint around the world.” The project might invite viewers to slow down, to decide the pace of life, and the think about the meaning of our existence.