(___)

This site-specific installation by Sunny Hsu and Anny Chen was created in the Cing Shuei Military Village—a historic space with traces of past life.

Stepping into this unfamiliar environment, we felt like intruders, occupying a space that once belonged to others. The fragility of what remained—the forgotten, the left-behind—raised questions: how do you pass on a memory that no longer has a caretaker? Surrounded by the growing city, the space felt like a delicate, collapsing object suspended in time.

We attempt to both protect and confront the space’s vulnerability, filling it with "充氣包" (airbags)—a material that is common to offer protection of transportation fragile objects. We titled the work “(__)” to reflect both the form of the airbags and the emptiness they attempted to hold. The installation formed a stark tension between the act of cushioning something valuable and the futility of trying to fill a void. As the room filled, it echoed the cold, impersonal materials and space left behind after departure.

With no personal connection to the site, we approached it with the inertness of packing materials to ask the viewers: How do we engage with historical spaces in decay, and what does it mean to preserve something fading in a fast-moving world?