An Amusement Park for Marcel Marceau In Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius
Suspend in between Abstraction, Imagination, Fatasy and Dreams






Yalun Li
Harvard GSD 2019; abC Art Book Prize shortlisted
Instructor: Mack Scogin, Helen Han
The project
is An amusement
park for Marcel Marceau in Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius.
I shall explain with a small narrative story.
I shall explain with a small narrative story.
“
Marcel
Marceau had just finished work.
He has become so brilliant at work that everyone came to watch his mime for entertainment. Photos of his painted white face are all over the paper. The news praised him for the highly abstracted, yet extremely precise and delicate representation of man.
Just like any other day, audiences had left after their long applause and the curtains are dropped down.
Marcel Marceau sat on the stage alone in silence, looking around at his black and white world, when he realized he hasn’t forgotten how to dream.
He started to remember vaguely some stories he read long time ago about a place call Tlon, or Uqbar, he couldn’t recall. But he did remember that all nations of this planet are idealist.
As he tries to forget this utterly absurd memory, things start to appear, so small, mundane and subtle that he didn’t even notice. A chair, a desk, some nameless colors, and airy lights. But soon they multiplied, swelled, inflated, extended, proliferated and exploded.
Now he found his very own amusement park.
He has become so brilliant at work that everyone came to watch his mime for entertainment. Photos of his painted white face are all over the paper. The news praised him for the highly abstracted, yet extremely precise and delicate representation of man.
Just like any other day, audiences had left after their long applause and the curtains are dropped down.
Marcel Marceau sat on the stage alone in silence, looking around at his black and white world, when he realized he hasn’t forgotten how to dream.
He started to remember vaguely some stories he read long time ago about a place call Tlon, or Uqbar, he couldn’t recall. But he did remember that all nations of this planet are idealist.
As he tries to forget this utterly absurd memory, things start to appear, so small, mundane and subtle that he didn’t even notice. A chair, a desk, some nameless colors, and airy lights. But soon they multiplied, swelled, inflated, extended, proliferated and exploded.
Now he found his very own amusement park.
























These are
hypothetical illustrations of rides of this intangible amusement park. It is
successive and temporal, not spatial. These rides convoked and dissolved in a
moment, according to poetic needs.
Their number is 23 but the experience is practically infinite. They are a series of mental processes which do not develop in space but successively in time and continues to proliferate.
Their number is 23 but the experience is practically infinite. They are a series of mental processes which do not develop in space but successively in time and continues to proliferate.
© DUNES WORKSHOP