The poet Rumi (1207-1273) said that “the wound is the place where the light enters”.
Shandong is a place that suffered pain; some of it came from Japan. And from Japan is the inspiration we took to reveal these footprints. Kintsugi, the art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold. A broken object ceasing to serve and being discarded, its function is transformed into another: an active message highlighted by the cracks. The broken object goes from being a thing to being a graphic gesture that encourages us to emulate its powerful transformation, and, metaphorically, the wound goes from being a trace of darkness to being a window of light.
In this way, as a metaphor, we wants to emphasize those cracks, on land and memory, heritage that needs to be exposed, as gold.
The broken parts, the cracks, and the joints among cracks are the elements we used to reconstruct the territory and its memory, and to transform it into a meaningful cultural park (with some hope for healing).