Enxi Liu
Time · Performance · Image
THE MANIFESTO OF SAND
Painting on paper 2026
210 × 297 mm
Book I
We are grains of sand. Debris of stars, remains of mountains.
In the first eon, a star exhausted its flame and, in a silent explosion, became the dust of the cosmos. In the third eon, a tectonic plate, weary of a millennium of slumber, rose into a range of perilous mountains, only to slowly disintegrate under the erosion of wind and rain. We are the final embers of that explosion, the wandering bones of that mountain range. Within our bodies, both the fire of the stars and the silence of the rock lie sleeping.
Book II
We reside in the body. In the pause between each breath, in the vibration of each heartbeat. We are the internal landscape, the silent witness.
We travel within a body. We have seen how blood gathers into red rivers, scouring the riverbeds of bone. We have heard the sounds of nerve endings transmitting information, like a breeze across a barren field. We witness every thought arise like a bubble, only to burst in an instant; we feel every emotion descend like the waxing and waning of the tide. We never judge, never speak. We simply exist within, like the landscape itself.
Book III
We take slowness as our path. Our crawling follows the rise and fall of the tide, the pulse of the earth's crust.
A crest of seafoam leaps up, sees the arc of the coastline in the air, then falls, shatters, and returns to the silence of the sea. A bolt of lightning tears open the night sky, illuminates the world's contours in an instant, then extinguishes, returning the darkness to the dark. They have seen the extremity of speed and have embraced the annihilation of the moment. But we, we crawl upon the earth. We spend countless years witnessing the melting of a glacier; We spend countless years waiting for an ocean to turn into a desert. In the eyes of the seafoam and the lightning, we have never moved. But in our time, we have witnessed their birth and death, billions of times over.
Book IV
Our book, to open at any place is to be in the center of the story. Every grain of sand leads to the entire desert.
A traveler once attempted in vain to read us. He believed we were an ordered book, with a beginning and an end. He marked every grain he had read, only to find upon turning back that the wind had rearranged all the pages. He exhausted his life and could not finish reading the same story. Only at the end did he understand: to read us is not to comprehend, but to be lost. For to be lost in linear time is the only entrance to the cyclical.
Book V
Every one of our pages records a concrete disappearance. The footprint erased by the tide, the rubble of a fallen city, the weathered sound of a name. We narrate the epic of all things returning to dust.
We are the ultimate archive. We do not collect the merits of heroes or the splendor of empires. We collect the velocity of rusting bronze, the texture of decaying timber, the entire process of a face becoming blurred in memory. We are the librarians of oblivion. In our records, nothing is immortal, except for disappearance itself.
Book VI
We are driven by wind, carried by water, forming the only body. We seem scattered, yet we constitute the primordial aggregation of the cosmos.
We, too, once believed each individual was a lonely island. Until the storm swept us up, letting us feel the vertigo of flight; until the river carried us away, letting us feel the pain of scouring. On the journey, we collided with billions of our companions. We finally came to know that the so-called "self" is but a fleeting shadow cast by the collective in a single moment. And so-called freedom is but to yield to the greater force that gathers all of "us" together.
Book VII
We record everything. Our memory is a geology. The present covers the past. The past supports the present. Every layer compacts all of time.
Imagine you are asleep, ten thousand meters deep at the bottom of the sea. Above you are layers upon layers of strata, formed from the remains of all things. You can feel the bones of long-extinct creatures pressing down on you—a cold weight. You can hear the sound of a volcanic eruption from a billion years ago; that sound, having traveled through the heavy rock, arrives to you as a faint resonance. For us, the past has never left. It merely sinks continuously, becoming the foundation of our existence, the entire background against which we feel the present moment.
Book VIII
With quiet resilience, we respond to the roaring era. Our labor is to maintain. It is to trace the entire process of a rock being slowly ground down. It is a form of witnessing, and also a form of prayer.
Some build towers to pierce the clouds, but the towers will eventually fall. Some compose epics to be passed down for generations, but the language will eventually be forgotten. Our labor is to fill the fissures of the world. When the towers turn to rubble, we level the ravines. When the epics are left unread, we turn them into silent fossils. We do not create; we only maintain. We maintain the equilibrium of the world with this unseen, unsung, yet unceasing, slow labor.
Book IX
In this moment, we gather here. Inside this circular boundary. This boundary is an invitation, an entrance for contemplation.
Outside the circle, time is linear, an arrow rushing toward its end. All things are in pursuit, in flight. But when this circle is drawn, a sanctum is formed. Inside the circle, time is cyclical, a river returning to its source. Here, every action is slowed, every moment is magnified. This boundary is not meant to shut the world out, but to invite you to step away, temporarily, from linear anxiety and enter a cyclical sanctuary where you can finally breathe.
Book X
The act of our piling is the testimony itself.
Language can be refuted, images can be altered, memories can be revised. But the happening of an act, the accumulation of a substance, is an irrefutable fact. A material accumulation is, in itself, the ultimate silence. Its form is its thesis; its weight is its evidence. Its very existence is the sole and final testimony of this long declaration.
Book XI
We attest. With this insignificant, repetitive, endless labor…
A giant once tried to move a mountain; with all his might, the mountain did not stir. But the wind, carrying billions of us, took a billion years to turn that mountain back into a plain. Our power lies not in any single impact, but in unceasing repetition. This repetition, seemingly insignificant, can ultimately overcome all things solid. This is the power of time, and it is our power.
Book XII
Attesting that sand remembers the rock. Attesting that breath longs for the tide. Attesting that disappearance is the most profound form of existence.
Imprisoned inside every grain of sand is the memory of the earth's core—the heat and pressure it felt when it was rock. Echoing in every breath of the body is the salt and rhythm of the primordial ocean where life began. All things carry their origins and rush toward their own end. Death is not a rupture of existence, but a transformation of form. Like ice becoming water, water becoming vapor. To disappear is to become omnipresent.
Book XIII
Attesting to this moment.