Done Duet

Commissioned by 13th Shanghai Biennale, 2021.

Displayed at Power Station of Art, Shanghai, between April 17th – July 25th, 2021, with an activation performance on April 16th. 

Voice (22’45” loop), steel, acid, quartz, polyester, water, video (multi-cam live monitor).

Done Duet recast the silos, a cavity that cuts through three floors, as the spine of Shanghai’s Power Station of Art. It evoked the sensation of undergoing a lumar puncture– the extraction of a vital liquid from deep within the body, pulled through a long thin needle – a procedure that Pan experienced many times over the course of a childhood illness.

Acid-soaked steel and strands of hair hang from the ceiling, eroding and degrading over the course of the three-month installation. Droplets of water fall metronomically from the sky to a desert of quartz, collecting in a pool and turning slowly to amber. A live monitor at the viewers’ feet transmits real-time images from the ceiling to the ground. Cascading layers of opera voices invite the audience into the space, transforming it into a dissonant reverie, underwater or above the sky. Eroded landscapes are punctuated with moments of liveness to encourage an inward listening of the composition and architecture. Its viewers narrativise and shape, through the direction of gaze or duration of their stay, their own experience, entering into a performative entity that continuously feeds back into the work.

水可以将峡谷雕刻成岩石，但是对于个人而言，这种景观变化过于缓慢而无法察觉。《重奏》的衍变不止，参观者不断在它的存在上留下痕迹，从空间里的配角变成主角。他们的行为预示了结尾也启动了一个新的循环，任何元素都可以构成表演环境，任何背景都可以作为创作机体，耳朵与眼睛相扶相佐，给我们的存在赋予了更多诗意的可能。