When Is The Last Time You Cried?

When is the last time you cried?

Online Event

2019
artificial tear, glass, wood (online event launched in 2019 tother with VISION)

When is the last time you cried? I cried yesterday morning. A partner left our project in a sudden. Though it is just an obstacle at work, I dropped down a few tears after hanging off the call. Only glad that she didn’t notice in the phone. Tear is the shameless body fluid in the dark. A kid cries for survival; Adult weeps out weakness.

Tears are secretions, symptoms and signs. We cry out of pain or joy, love and loss, sometimes for an onion. It rolls down the cheeks, leaving eyes red and trails of stains. Regardless the causes, tear generates from three layers in the tear film:

Lipid, aqueous and mucins.

I tried to understand these layers of sadness, while crying every day for a month in 2015. I brought bottles of tear to laboratories and analyzed what inside. It was dried out, burnt, reacted with chemicals and turned into different colors. I couldn’t tell which was more fatiguing, crying it out or breaking it down.

After the month, I got my recipe:

Water: 97.56% Protein: 7905.9ug/ml PH: 7.62 Glucose: 0 mg/ml Na+ : 151.6mM K+ : 19.5mM

I made a big jar of my tear by mixing all the chemicals accordingly and an installation pumping the tear out. inviting people to touch it.

I wondered, would I feel the touch on my cheeks?

A visitor in the exhibition once asked me, are you sad?

I figured, we might feel the same.

I want to invite you to take a bottle my tear and the rules are simple:
Send me a 30-second long video of yourself tearing down in exchange for one bottle of the artificial tear I mixed. I have thirty bottles.

Here is my email: tearbottles@voidvision.com

Waiting for you.

Xin Liu