Interviews with participating artists
This was a performance art show at Tate on 27 May this year, the performance was called 'Our Labyrinth' this performance consisted of two dancers with bells tied around their ankles slowly sweeping rice grains into patterns. Over time, the dancers shape the grains into a series of labyrinth-like paths that resemble pools of ink on the floor. This work was inspired by the artist's experience of visiting an ancient temple in Burma. The dancers may encounter obstacles midway through the piece, but will continue to dance silently, the artist is trying to provide the viewer with a physical and spiritual 'pure' space.
Watching this performance gave me a deep sense of emotion. This performance gave me a sense of the cycle of life and destiny. As the dancers kept sweeping the grains of rice erratically to form one swirl after another, the dancers were also intersecting and separating in an erratic manner. This made me think again that life is also like this, that many things are also divided and united. Going back to my own research on the subject of life and death, in the course of my research I have actually looked at some scientific theories of the soul and spatial dimensions. These theories explain that dimensions are more like a flowing period of time, and that this feeling of reincarnation and circulation is similar to what I felt in the artist's performance.
After finishing watching this performance. I had the opportunity to attend a workshop and interview with the artist by WITH LEE MINGWEI. In this interview I gained a deep understanding of how the artist thinks and how he implements the creative process. I learnt that LEE's work focuses on the formation and reflection of human relationships. His work often involves situations that invite participants to reflect on their connections with others or prompt them to make new connections with strangers. His work often relates to the aesthetics of relationships which is actually what provoked me to think about my own work. What is relationship. The relationship between people and space, the relationship between people and things that happen, the relationship between things. The interview with him gave me a deeper understanding of relationships. I also learnt that he was influenced by some Asian religions in the process of creating his work, and that this influence is directly reflected in his performance art. In the interview, the artist said that he did not ask the dancers to perform too much, but just let them have their own interpretation of the piece. So the two dancers come together at times and spread out at others as a result of their free play. Formally it was similar to a wabi-sabi ritual. I sat on the sidelines for an hour or so watching the sunlight fade and the floor change from a pile of 'gold' to a scattered pile of sand. Watching the dancers go back and forth was very much like a conversation between my own soul and mind.
This is a film by Charwei that I attended at tate as well as an interview. This film of hers consists mainly of some performance art she has done in recent years. With conceptual art at the core of her work, Charwei's work is heavily inspired by religion, especially the Heart Sutra, which she has been exposed to since she was a child, and which is the main axis of her work. In some of her performances I can also see something about the reincarnation of life and death. In her series of performance works, I was most impressed by the fact that one of her performance works is like a shaman's practice. The old man pulls a fishing rod and keeps shouting to the sea: Come back, come back. He chants a local chant like a spell. He wants to see the spirit of his son. The emotion expressed here is very sincere and at the same time very moving for me. It reminded me that when I started my own project, which was also about life and death, these feelings were in fact very difficult to describe. When I was working on my own project, I was also thinking about where people go after they die, even though I had read a lot of scientific answers about dimensions, or about the energy body of the soul, or about the theory of linking different spaces. When the old man said that he returned home after the ceremony and felt that his son had really come back, it really struck a chord with me.
ZENG