Exhibition Information
Stairwell Drift: A Stairwell Poetry Experiment was a poetry exhibition that took place in the stairwell of a self-built residential building near Changsha West Bus Station. Initiated and curated by Shucen Liu, the exhibition ran from April 5 to May 5, 2026.
The building is where I grew up. After the stairwell was repainted, its bright white walls covered over the scratches, stickers, stains, and marks left from my childhood. Their disappearance made me realize that these seemingly insignificant traces had quietly formed the most intimate connection between myself and this place. After years away from Changsha, I returned and found myself almost like a temporary resident here: familiar, yet estranged; returned, yet unable to truly go back. The project began as an attempt to re-enter this place through poetry, and to leave new traces in the stairwell at the entrance of my home.
Following an open call, the project received submissions from more than 80 poets. Eventually, 109 works by 65 poets were selected for the exhibition. The poems were installed across the stairwell, landings, and walls from the first to the sixth floor, and were organized into three sections: Corner, To and Fro, and Echo. These sections moved from urban margins and pauses in everyday survival, to routes of movement, migration, and belonging, and finally to the repeated resonance of sound, memory, and intimacy within the walls.
The stairwell was not a neutral exhibition space. It connected the home with the outside world, private life with public noise. It also carried the traces of neighbors passing through, objects piled in the corners, damp walls, footsteps, and sound-activated lights. Here, poetry was no longer only text. It became a kind of echo, smell, and temporary mark attached to the space. Visitors encountered the works while moving up and down the stairs, pausing at corners, doorways, and landings, reading the poems alongside the building’s existing rhythms of daily life.
In addition to the poetry works, the exhibition included a silent video work of the same title and a 19-minute-57-second field recording, which served as a drifting visual and sonic background for the stairwell. On the opening day, an improvised poetry and sound performance took place in the space. Participants used cups, chopsticks, plastic bags, palms, teeth, and other everyday objects as “sound tools,” allowing language, bodily movement, echoes, and the architecture of the stairwell to collide.
Stairwell Drift is less about a definitive return than about a suspended state between leaving and coming back. The stairwell is neither a point of departure nor a destination, but a repeated in-between space: people pass through it, pause, climb up, and walk down, carrying with them their bodies, memories, circumstances, and voices not yet spoken.
Moving Image & Sound
彳非彳回 (Drift), silent video, 19’57”
In March and April, it rained almost every day in Changsha. There was not much greenery around where I lived. Each day, I walked along Yulan Road from home to a nearby parcel pickup point. This area felt both familiar and unfamiliar to me. Familiar were the loudspeakers playing day and night; unfamiliar were the shopkeepers sitting at their storefronts, the street vendors, and the people lingering by the roadside.
I passed by them every day. They sat there, watching many people pass by.
Stairwell Drift is a silent moving-image work. It is accompanied by an environmental sound recording of the same duration. The sound and image are not synchronized, nor do they have a fixed starting point. They can begin at any moment, meeting and drifting apart from each other in a loop.
As part of Stairwell Drift: A Stairwell Poetry Experiment, the work was looped as a background moving image at the entrance on the ground floor.
Editing / Shucen Liu
Camera / Tianyu, Shucen Liu
Wangchengpo, Changsha
March 2026
彳非彳回 (Drift), field recording, 19’57”
Presented as a drifting sound piece in the stairwell.
Recording, Editing / Shucen Liu
Openning Program
Opening Performance: Stairwell Poetry Improvisation
The opening event took the form of an open, collective improvisation in the stairwell. Participants were invited to bring or use everyday “sound tools” — cups, chopsticks, teeth, palms, plastic bags, shakers, or simply a sentence they had long wanted to say. Guided by a set of prompts, the performance brought together poetry, sound, bodily movement, echoes, and ordinary objects, allowing them to collide and resonate within the stairwell.
Exhibition Views
Entrance
At the entrance, visitors found three MP3 players containing the sound work, which could be listened to while watching the video or reading the poems. A cassette recorder and blank tapes were also provided, inviting visitors to record their own voices — by reading a poem from the exhibition or simply speaking freely. A guestbook was placed nearby for notes and responses. Self-service beer was also available at the entrance for 18 RMB per can.
Afterword
The exhibition began rather spontaneously one evening in late February. At first, I simply felt that the objects at home were old, and that the building — inside and out — looked messy and worn. Since I was staying in Changsha for a rare stretch of time, I wanted to try rearranging the stairwell, and through this process, reconnect with the building and the city. I wrote the open call that night, photographed the neighborhood the next day, and soon began receiving poems and messages from people willing to help. My mother supported the project throughout the process: we collected discarded cardboard boxes, woven bags, and foam boards from nearby streets, and she helped move the chairs and tables into the stairwell. Many of the friends who helped were people I had known from school, or friends in Changsha who responded after the open call was released. Their support made it possible for this small, self-organized exhibition to take shape.
Notes & Moments
Guestbook
Selected pages from the exhibition guestbook, documenting visitors’ handwritten responses, comments, and traces of presence.
