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

Cascading layers of opera voices invite the audience into the space, transforming it into a dissonant reverie underwater or above the sky. A series of sculptures perform violence to our imagination which brings everything to a state of flux. Eroded landscapes are punctuated with moments of liveness to encourage an inward listening of the composition as well as the architecture and eventually to bring eyes closer to ears, bodies closer to minds. This agency is activated through performance when the passage of time is hinted and its silence is amplified. Collectively the viewers monitored and projected will narrativize and shape, through the direction of gaze or duration of their stay, their own experience, a performative entity that will continuously feedback to the work and echo through its transition. Between opposing spaces of the organic and the mechanical, the self and surrounding environment foregrounds what Bachelard calls a ‘duet between dreamer and world, making man and the world into two wedded creatures that are paradoxically united in the dialogue of their solitude.’

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。