[Do Ho Suh: "Rubbing / Loving"]
I have a mutual friend who was giving up this flat.
And so I took it.
I never lived anywhere else in New York City--
this is the first and the last place.
I had an interview with my landlord.
They heard that I'm an artist.
They were really concerned.
They were not sure whether I could actually pay the rent.
But they let me live here.
It was my living space and studio for eighteen years.
My artistic career started from here.
The whole process is to remember the space,
and also somehow memorialize the space.
Whoever is going to buy this place is going to renovate the space
and everything is going to go.
It is quite a meaningful place for the family--
and also for me.
I've been moving around since I left Korea.
I'm living in London now.
It's a constant recalibration.
I try to understand my life as a movement through different spaces.
--You can do this, as well.
--Yeah, don't worry.
--I know...
--[WOMAN] We just fixed it!
[ALL LAUGH]
--[SUH] Yeah.
After this project is done and peeled away from the space,
I'll probably pack it and show it somewhere in the future.
It's a bit difficult to take it off from the objects,
but once you do that carefully, it still contains the shape of the object.
I was constantly seeking some other means to
capture the information of the space
that was lacking from my fabric version.
When I discovered it by rubbing,
it just brought the memories associated with those details.
And there's hundreds of thousands of it.
When I did fabric versions of this space,
Arthur, the landlord, was supporting my project emotionally.
You know, I don't know how much he understood what I was doing back then,
but he always let me do crazy things in this space.
If I write "rubbing" in Korean,
people could read it as "loving"
because there's no distinction between "r" and "l" in Korean alphabet.
I think the gesture of rubbing is a very loving gesture.
So, I made the connection between rubbing and loving,
and that's how the title came about.
My energy has been accumulated,
and in way, I think, my rubbing shows that.
The darker area--doorknobs and locks--
that's the objects that you touch every time.
And just imagine how many times that I actually
flip that light switch when I was living in here for eighteen years.
I'm trying to show the layers of time.
>From the distance, it looks like a drawing.
As you get closer, it becomes very sculptural and three-dimensional.
There's a point where it sort of changes from two-dimensional to three-dimensional.
Arthur, he was suffering with Alzheimer's disease.
A few months before he passed away,
I made a special effort to see him.
He warned me that he may not remember me.
I was prepared for that,
but we ended up talking two hours.
So at the end of the day,
I asked him to come down to see what we were doing.
I showed him around and then he said,
"Oh, there's nothing much to see!"
You know, which is understandable.
But then he sat down and told me,
"You're welcome to do whatever you want to do in this house."
And I was almost going to burst into tears
because that's exactly what he told me you know, thirteen years ago,
when I was measuring the hallway at 4 o'clock in the morning
because I didn't want to disturb other people.
He came down so quietly
and then saw me measuring the corner
and he said, "What are you doing?"
And I tried to explain [LAUGHS]
you know, about the project,
but he said the exact same thing:
"Do whatever you want to do."