10pm. Outside a quiet cafe in London Chinatown a girl sat casually knitting a 3 meter scroll made from paper shreds. Surrounding her, teenagers stood outside pubs drinking and chatting. At a distance, music accompanied by dancing steps resonated in harmony with the atmosphere of the night. The girl noticed it all, but continued her knitting in perfect tranquillity and enjoyment.

This is the travelling project of Hong Kong artist Movana Chen.

The idea of "Travelling into your bookshelf", that is - understanding the world by knitting books, first came to Movana in December 2008. She asked her friends to send her their books, and the first one she received was a Korean version of Gone with the Wind. "I couldn't read it", she confessed, "but I interpreted and added meaning to it in my own way by shredding it into paper strips and knitted it into a scroll."

Since the start of her project, she has already 'knitted' 5 books by herself. Then she came up with another idea. Why not visit the friends who gave the books and physically "travel into their bookshelves"? She first visited her friend Eleonora Lupo in Milan to teach her knitting so that Eleonora can contribute her book to the scroll herself.

"I met Eleonora on the street and she was very interested in what I do. So I emailed her to ask if I shall come for a visit, and so I went." During her stay in Milan, Movana experienced the authentic Italian way of life, gathering unique memories that tourism would never bring. "When Eleonora knitted her own book, she was sad to have broken some strips of paper, and wanted me to fix them. But for me this is much more meaningful, because when I see the holes in the scroll I will remember Eleonora and my time spent in Italy."

Apart from holiday entertainment, the scroll has a deeper significance for Movana, "by knitting together the books of different people, I am connecting the lives of my friends who have never met each other and allowing them to communicate across national and cultural boundaries." She received books from Japan, China and Hong Kong, including even music books. "You can still see the scores on the knitted paper", she proudly showed her scroll. "When I knit music books, I can hear the melody in my head!"

Visiting London

After visiting Eleonora, Movana came to London to visit her London artist friend Mukul Patel and teach him knitting. Upon arrival at Mukul's studio Ambient Space, Movana immediately felt at home with the London art culture. She taught Mukul the knitting process, and invited many friends to participate in the workshop. When the party sat outside on the balcony around a wooden table, shredding, knitting, cutting, laughing, chatting, and drinking coffee, they could not have enjoyed themselves better.

Movana then travelled with her friends around London on a 24 hour tour, stopping at different locations to knit. Strangers on the street stopped by and joined her on her project. Stopping and walking when she wants and not feeling the pressure of time, she attentively observed the minute details of London. "Broadway market has a lively spirit with young people on bikes, Soho Square is relaxed with people enjoying themselves in the park on a sunny day, Camden is busy with shoppers and street performances..."

Her observations include a funny anecdote too. "When we were eating pizza in a Camden Italian restaurant, I noticed a 70 yr old Asian couple sitting in a corner just eating and not talking at all. Everyone else is young, lively and chatty, but to have this couple in the background I felt that the whole atmosphere is calmer than it appears." She proved herself to have the eyes of an artist.

A Lifelong Project

"To give you my beloved books and let you shred them into pieces, so that they can be reborn as a form of art, I feel reluctant and sad but at the same time very grateful." Those are the words a friend wrote inside a book gifted to Movana.

To say that Movana is damaging books is far from the truth. In fact, she treasures the books of her friends dearly, preserves them, reads them and even underlines each single word she reads with wavy lines like the wave pattern of a knitted piece of fabric. She also keeps a notebook to collect her thoughts and memories while reading, travelling and knitting. Inside the notebook are book covers that she preserved, old train tickets, photos, the names of strangers who spoke to her, and a lot more...

For Movana, the books are an accurate reflection of her friends' thoughts, views, perspectives and culture. "They contain the owner's memories and the papers themselves retain a unique smell as time goes by. Through the knitting process, I have generated communication with my friends' memories."

Since the beginning of her project, Movana has attracted much interest from her friends all over the world and by now received more than 70 books. "I am so happy and grateful, but at the same time I now have no time to knit them", she laughed. 

Knitting Paper as Art

Before Movana started her "Travelling" project, she already has a long history of knitting print media to create art. In 2004, she started making "magazine clothes", giving meaning to information by the process of deconstructing and reconstructing.

The original inspiration came when she was an accountant shredding documents at her company as it prepared to end its Hong Kong operation. "People often use highlighters on shipping documents and these produced colourful shredded paper." Inspired by beautiful threads of old paper, Movana developed her own art of knitting. For the next couple of years, she busied herself with making magazine garments of all sorts - dresses, skirts, tops... She turned printed information into art, giving an alternative way of reading, so that the viewer can appreciate the magazines equally well without reading them.

Amongst her work is a type of knitted paper clothes that covers her entire body called "body containers". When she wears them, viewers cannot see her at all from the outside, so that she is in the world but essentially cut away from it. "I want to express the way media takes one to a different world" the innovative artist explained, "I present this idea physically by wrapping myself in magazines clothes." And sure enough, when she experimented walking on the street in her body containers, she is always followed by crowds of onlookers and cameras.

During one exhibition, to Movana's surprise a man came up to her and started having a conversation. "He is the first person that spoke to me while I am invisible", she said. "He asked if he can try my body container on, and I thought, why not?" And that's how Movana's project started involving her audience.

Inspired by this stranger, Movana invited her viewers to wear the body containers. "When people see my project's participants, no one knows who they are. Completely covered, they lose their own identities and communicate in a new way."

The material Movana works with is particularly fragile, and some of her interactive audience accidentally broke the clothes. Despite initially feeling sad, the positive artist quickly cheered up, "I realized that my audience were interacting with my work, so that I have initiated a dialogue as opposed to one way communication."

The Future of Travelling

With her increasingly long scroll and fond memories of London, Movana returned to Hong Kong. But this is only the beginning of Movana's journey. She will then be travelling to Brussels, Barcelona, New York, Beijing, Seoul and many more places. She will bring intrigue and vitality to wherever she visits and discover the world through her own eyes. Every person she encounters and every detail she observes will be documented in her scroll and notebook.

For more information see:
http://www.movanachen.com/
http://web.me.com/jamesvyner/Movana/Onedayatatime.html