RUNZE FENG​

As particulate matter migrates ceaselessly through architectural voids — new sediments invading as old residues evacuate — artist performs the ritual of Dust Archaeology within Berlin's Kronprinzenpalais (The historic site where the German Unification Treaty was signed in 1990).

 

Adopting the persona of "Doctor Dust," the artist executes daily forensic collection of particulate depositions, systematically sealing each dated specimen in glass cylinders as material chronometers. This bureaucratic archiving ritual operates on three conceptual strata:

 

Ephemeral Historiography

Airborne particulates embody invisible historical strata—the displaced residues of human passage, environmental erosion, and institutional decay. Each vial petrifies the palace's breathing memory.

 

Politics of Residue

The collected dust constitutes social detritus: the disenfranchised matter mirroring marginalized populations erased from dominant historical narratives. Its curation asserts archival validity for the neglected.

 

Material Metonymy

Accelerated particulate flux mirrors late-capitalist societal volatility, where individuals become transient particles in urban machines—continuously replaced, permanently disposable.

 

Through sediment cartography, the artist constructs a counter-monument to historical erasure. The test tubes become reliquaries for sacrificial matter, transforming neglected fragments into epistemological evidence of collective existence within capitalism's invisible labor cycles.