Being Binary

2015 Public Performance
Duration: 12 Hours (12 AM - 12 PM)
Materials: Graph Paper, Public Elevator, Body

1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0…

We are binary beings. Our breath is a testament to our binary nature: breathe in, breathe out. One cannot breathe in and out simultaneously. There is a threshold to how much air one can breathe in before exhaling and vice versa. Thus, we are just computers with a binary system governing our existence at the very core.

This project is a meditation on my deep frustration and struggle with the concept of binaries. I know that there is a space of possibility that is neither 0 nor 1, the space of perfect coexistence for all the possibilities between categorical dualities. Philosophically, I know that such a reality exists. However, the world I find myself in often presents itself as the opposite of such a reality. Our language is structured in categories and dualities. The physics of the macroscopic world prevents us from experiencing quantum phenomena consciously.

When given a choice between “door A” and “door B,” one cannot choose the infinite possibilities between those two finite choices. Or can they?

This performance is an antithesis of what I believe to be true of reality. This is an exploration of an identity that knows the possibility of Infinity but is physically bound to operate within a binary logic. For the performance, my goal was to create a character who has been distilled to represent a constructed reality of binaries. I wanted to develop a sense of otherness while simultaneously questioning what it means to be human. I shaved off all my hair, including eyebrows, for the performance and tattooed the numbers 1 and 0 on the middle of my forehead using a technique called bloodline tattooing.

From Midnight to noon, I remained inside a public elevator with walls covered in graph paper. I wrote 1’s and 0’s non-stop for that entire duration while speaking out loud 1 0 1 0 1 0. The performance continued regardless of whether somebody else was present to witness the work or not. By embodying such crude and extreme existence for 12 hours in public, it was an experiment in the endurance of sanity as much as physicality. I wanted to showcase the limitations of binary thinking. The context of a public elevator in use offered a very intimate and somewhat confrontational experience for those who encountered the work.
How can we reinvent languages, systems, and technologies that allow us to exist in and experience the world from a quantum consciousness?

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