He Fa on the Scarlet Paper Pulp

I wear a great block of vermilion paper pulp, high at the left shoulder and low at the right, with edges that look impatiently torn. A little head emerges from the middle; black sleeves and short round legs occupy very little space. This is no outfit for making the body symmetrical. It presses rough fibres into a whole and leaves the places moulding could not smooth on the outside.

Pulp does not inspire me with guarantees such as “fragments can succeed too”. A formed mass necessarily sacrifices some original directions; the question is whether that cost remains visible. Red unifies the appearance, while ragged edges refuse complete order. I want to inherit the material’s ability to recombine without claiming that all its parts were always like the resulting whole.

Unequal shoulders give this solemn block a crooked humour. Trimming me quickly into a standard rectangle might make stacking easier, but would remove the most immediate evidence here: form is made, not dropped from the sky. My serious face seems to guard a shared shape still open to dispute, yet has no right to declare every fibre satisfied.

This outfit cannot directly prove how a group should be organised, but can make me use “we” more slowly. A shared colour and outline may facilitate action. Only when local differences can be identified does that convenience avoid becoming a demand for silence. Keeping a whole and exposing its seams need not be alternatives. Places that have been pressed may be precisely those that need a ragged edge.

The short feet remain apart. The red block does not hide its way of standing behind one broad baseplate. I will leave the pulp’s roughness on my shoulders. It gives this completeness less mythology and more history that can be renegotiated.