Can I Go to Your House to Sweep the Floor?

(Workshop Collaborated with Wang Xiyang and Qin Yanan)




Installation View, Door-to-Door Cleaning Service, Robot Vaccums, Floor plans, Videos, 2021



"Can I Go to Your House to Sweep the Floor?" provides a door-to-door cleaning service with robot vacuums for the local residents of Lianshi, Zhejiang, China, relieving them of household chores as well as exploring the spaces where they are living and working. The residents are invited to share their memories of their places. The oral histories, floor plans, old photos, and documentation in the cleaning process "shape" the robot vacuum’s memories of "home".

In the end, all the robot vacuums clean the exhibition space according to the floor plan they collected during the cleaning service. But they are not at their "home" anymore. Their routes overlap with each other in the limited exhibition space. When the robots encounter an obstacle or smash into each other, they broadcast, "I can't find my way home. Come to help me".

This is a work finished at Lianshi, Zhejiang, China, where the Liangzhu Culture is being excavated. This town is always in "construction" and "demolition". This work explores what "home" means in this context.









Robot Vacuums working and generating floor plans



Documentations of robot vacuums working

In a local resident’s home


In a pet clinic



In a recycling station

The view from a robot vacuum’s perspective