The Red Thread,
The Red String Theory, a belief from East Asian mythology,
believes that people who are destined to be present in each other’s lives are connected by a red string, and life will bring them to meet again despite time, circumstance, or distance.
When your destined relation has ended, it means that the thread has simply fallen loose, then fallen off.
Rooting the Project
One of the vital parts of the project is to investigate deeper into the meaning of certain elements of related to buttons, the medium I chose to investigate it's relation to person--people.
Which button do I take?
What kind of thread do I use?
Researching the object within language, cultures and personal histories, this step deepens the context and meaning around the object and its usage.
The Give and Take,
By giving and taking, the connection between the participants and the project itself becomes more entangled.
When you have to give something, but what you gave would ultimately become the foundation of the project. There's something in this exchange that holds more significance than just receiving a new button.
These buttons form this silent network of people and become the medium for forming a collective. It has become the medium of interaction, the social, and the making of "we" .
The Button closest to The Heart
There is a unique custom that says boys give their second button of the school uniform to the person they love at graduation or after graduation as a way of holding lasting remembrance. The significance of the second button is that it is located closest to one’s heart.
One of the origins dates back to World War II. Men going to war gave the second button of their military uniform as a memento because they might not be able to come back again after going to war.
This research not only justifies certain choices; it also grounds the project. It is the soil from which the project grows, expanding its meaning and deepening its connections.
It is also an exploration of the relational —buttons and threads as mediums of person-to-person relationships. What have they been holding long before I began this investigation?
