From May 5, 2017 to November 27, 2019 — over two and a half years — I continuously cut apart Beckett's novel Watt, removing all text except the word "Watt." At the end of each day's cutting, I burned the remnants to ash, stored them in bottles, and labeled each with the exact time the cutting ended and the page numbers cut. In total, I cut through 420 pages, preserving 92 instances of "Watt" and collecting 54 bottles of remaining ash.

"Watt" can be a person's name, the title of a book, a unit of power, or a question — "What?"

I have too many questions about life. These questions compel me to search for something — absurdly, I don't know what it is, nor am I sure what I'm looking for. Until one day I encountered Watt (Samuel Beckett's novel). I was deeply drawn to the title and the quintessentially Beckettian aesthetic of "failure." I decided to call whatever I was searching for "Watt."

"Watt" became abstract. Gradually it shifted from a pronoun to the question itself. The act of looking for "Watt" grew increasingly uncertain, merging into daily life and becoming a ritual of confronting absurdity with absurdity.

For me, looking for "Watt" is less a work of art than a diary of an ordinary life, written through the daily act of cutting a book. It records my state of trying to "find something": boredom, triviality, futility, fatigue, emptiness, no end in sight...

January 28, 2016 — My cat, who had been with me for five years, ran away from home. April 8, 2017 — The search was fruitless. I thought perhaps it would never come back. April 20, 2017 — On my birthday, I gave myself a copy of Watt. May 5, 2017 — I began the life of looking for "Watt." November 27, 2019 — Two years and six months since I began. 420 pages cut, 54 bottles of ash collected, 92 instances of "Watt" preserved.

The original impulse behind looking for "Watt" was the search for a lost cat. As time passed, finding the cat became less important. My search shifted from a concrete thing to the question itself; from the grief of losing a cat to a greater grief. When you truly realize you have lost something you once took for granted, the act of searching becomes the beginning of all great unease.

The act of looking for "Watt" ultimately did not lead to perception or yield a result. On the contrary, it pointed toward an ultimate question: Looking for what?!

This work is dedicated to my runaway cat, to dear Mr. Beckett, and to all those who search tirelessly without seeking a result.

November 27, 2019, Chengdu

从2017.5.5—2019.11.27，这两年半的时间里，我不停的去切割贝克特的这本小说《瓦特》，把除去“瓦特”之外所有文字剔除，并且在当日切割结束后烧毁燃成灰烬之后存放在瓶子里，并且标注好切割结束的具体时间，以及所切割的页码。总计切割420P纸张，留下92个“瓦特”，收集54瓶剩余灰烬。