The Gao Brothers recited Celan's poems
I started my journey in performance art in 2008 when I participated in the Da Dao Xian Chang International Performance Art Festival. In 2011, I became involved in theater when I joined the Ladybug Theater Society. I have been shuttling between performance art and theater, and I've always been intrigued by the relationship between the two. In 2017, at the Venice Biennale, Em Hof introduced theater into live performance art, which greatly excited me and made me believe that the cross-disciplinary fusion of performance art and theater had become a visible phenomenon that deserved discussion. Fortunately, Youlun's platform provided the opportunity to realize this idea.
Initially, I wanted to have a dialogue, but later, I realized that solely focusing on theoretical discussions might be somewhat empty. So, I thought about incorporating a workshop. I invited Cao Kefei, a director who has worked in both Germany and China, to join me in organizing this workshop. I work in performance art, and she works in theater. I invited some performance artists, and she invited theater performers to see what would happen when we collaborate and collide in a shared creative process.
Paul Celan is a poet I particularly admire, so for this workshop, I decided to use his poetry as the background and text. The workshop started with reading Celan's poems. Participants used his poems as inspiration for their own performance pieces. At the same time, I had everyone refer to the paintings of Anselm Kiefer to help them visually understand the poetry. Before the formal rehearsals, all participants had a discussion where they gradually developed the tone for this performance. "Ruins" became a keyword—these ruins encompassed two aspects: physical ruins from reality and spiritual ruins. With many art districts being demolished, scenes of ruins were everywhere, and everyone was shrouded in a sense of anxiety and unease. Naturally, Celan's poetry was connected to the current situation. Lu Feifei thought of transporting debris from demolition sites to create an installation, while Xue Qinzhi planned to make enormous wings from debris collected from the ruins. She would drag these heavy wings with her body during the performance. These wings reminded me of Kiefer's paintings, which often featured fallen winged figures. Another word that emerged from Celan's poetry was "death," which was corresponded to by Xiao Shengjie's performance. He sat on a chair, covered by a large black curtain. He became the backdrop for the entire performance.
On December 15, 2017, we prepared the space. The installation part entered first to create the atmosphere of the space. On December 16, the collective rehearsal began with poetry reading. Following that, there were exercises led by different performers, starting from the body and extending to sound. Kefei, with her many years of theater experience, knew which parts to retain, preserving the brilliant collective performance moments, and then connecting different segments into a whole. Each performer was a remarkable artist, so there were many exciting improvisations and spontaneous moments, adding unexpected elements to the performance. Performance artists, theater performers, dancers, and musicians ignited and collided with each other in a short amount of time, creating a tremendous field of energy and a resonance effect.
On the afternoon of December 17, 2017, the performance took place in two adjacent exhibition spaces at the UCCA Main Hall. One space was constructed as a scene resembling real-life ruins. Artist Lu Feifei built a desolate installation called "Ruins" using discarded wooden boards. "Some speak in silence; some remain silent. Some walk their own path. Exiles and the disappeared have all been at home. You unseen cathedrals, unheard rivers, the bells deep within us." Cobalt blue light was projected from behind, and there was an old sofa next to it with a table lamp. The corner of the wall on the other side was stacked with old bricks. In this space, Xue Qinzhi struggled to crawl while dragging heavy wings made from debris from demolition sites. In the adjacent space, performance artist Xiao Shengjie sat under a massive black curtain, appearing motionless like a black sculpture. His performance gave this space a sense of mystery and ritual. The person sitting still under the black curtain became a symbol system representing death and the metaphor of the curtain.
Xiao Shengjie's Performance Art, Scene
Two spaces, one pointing to reality and the other to metaphor. The structural arrangement of the two spaces not only broke the constraints of the stage but also shattered the limitations of fixed space. The performance occurred simultaneously in both spaces, and the performances in these two spaces also took place in different locations, scattered but connected by an internal line. The audience could wander between different spaces, choosing the parts they preferred to watch. In reality, no one could see the entire performance, and each person witnessed a different version. The audience present was not passive spectators but actively selective viewers. They had no distance from the performers, often becoming part of the performance themselves, and the performers would also stand among the audience, becoming spectators.
Xue Qinzhi's Performance
At the entrance, there was Cao Kefei's installation, where she arranged two rows of Paul Celan's poetry on matchboxes wrapped in Anselm Kiefer's paintings: "Eternal without a place, in memory, but where?". Inside the matchboxes were hidden Paul Celan's poems. Musician and performer Sun Dasi conducted a performance that disrupted the relationship between singers and the audience. He placed a microphone at the audience entrance and invited them to take out slips of paper with Paul Celan's poetry from Kefei's installation "Eternal without a place" and read them into the microphone. Simultaneously, he used a loop device to capture the voices of the readers, layering them repeatedly, and improvised on the guitar, creating a field in the live performance.
As the performance began, the Gao Brothers recited Paul Celan's poems with their deep voices, instantly quieting the noisy scene, filling the entire space with their magnetic voices.
"I am the first to drink blue, it is still looking
for its eyes
I drink from your footprints and see:
you roll me over your fingers, pearls, and you grow!
You grow, like all before
you rolled over: these black hail of sorrow
fall into a turning white scarf, because of that farewell wave.
Your hands are full of time, you come to me - and I say:
your hair is not brown
so you gently lift it on the scales of sorrow; it outweighs me..."
The Gao Brothers Reciting Poetry
The Gao Brothers wandered between the performance site and the audience, sometimes making themselves disappear, leaving their voices echoing in the space, and at other times climbing to the top of the ruins to recite. Musician Fenny created atmospheric music based on Paul Celan's poetry, with the theme "Snow Bed," and improvised it as the performance progressed. Her music was synthesized, occasionally accompanied by vocals. Fenny's music carried Celan's melancholy, along with darkness, fragmentation, and ambiguity, immersing the entire scene in the space constructed by the music.
Many audience members were present, and there were no boundaries between the audience and the performers. The audience moved and dispersed as the performance continued, while the performers also shifted roles between being performers and audience members.
The performance unfolded gently in front of Xiao Shengjie's black curtain. It started with a group portrait, where everyone connected through bodily contact, forming a collective physical ensemble, moving diagonally at a slow pace. This was an extension of improvisation through physical contact and was a collaborative performance. Next came the silent screams, caused by excessive opening of the mouth, leading to facial and bodily contortions.
Group Portrait, Silent Screams
The performance continued with the following elements:
Artist Yan Yin Hong interacted with a black sculpture using the language of her body. She performed a handstand from behind, spreading her legs upwards behind the black statue. Her actions reconstructed the form of the black statue and deconstructed its intended meaning. She then used a rope she happened to find to chase away the tightly packed audience in the exhibition hall. People were taken by surprise and scattered, avoiding her sudden attack.
Artist Sun Dasi drew inspiration from Paul Celan's poem "Death Fugue." She held a large whip in both hands, moved along the corridor with Peking opera-style steps, and chanted, "Black milk of the morning, we drink in the morning and at noon, we drink in the evening, we drink, we drink...". She repeatedly chanted this phrase while moving through the exhibition hall. Due to her strong sense of rhythm and powerful vocalization, she added a touch of humor and playfulness to Paul Celan's dark poetry, deconstructing the verses through her vocal interpretation and infusing them with a surreal and darkly humorous quality.
Sun Dasi's Rap
Dancer Xin Ya's dance was also inspired by Paul Celan's poem "Death Fugue." She interpreted death through a dark dance and a celestial dance, pointing towards two dimensions of death: one towards hell and the other towards heaven. First, she wore a mask and performed her Japanese Butoh-style "Dance of Death" within Xiao Shengjie's performance installation. Twisting her body to eerie music, she moved as if she were a dancer from a dark world. She approached the audience and then moved closer to Yan Yin Hong, who temporarily joined her in a performance, starting with an attempt to get closer to her and gradually developing an intimate relationship, like a pair of loving lovers. However, suddenly, death revealed its grim face, becoming violent and aggressive. He dragged her body and strangled Yan Yin Hong's throat until she gradually suffocated. In another part of the performance, Xin Ya changed into a white classical costume, resembling a celestial being. She incorporated elements from Dunhuang frescoes of flying figures into her solo dance. One particularly memorable moment was when an elderly man (Mr. 4.0) dragged a bag filled with miscellaneous items from another "real space" and slowly entered this "metaphorical space," encountering a white-clad dancer coming from death...
New Sprout's Dance of Death
New Sprout and Yan Yinhong
New Sprout and Yan Yinhong
The Encounter of Two Time-Spaces
In another space, there were constant screams and cries. Xue Qinzhi continued to crawl on the ground with great difficulty, dragging the heavy wings made of ruins. In front of her, someone guided her with charcoal and a flashlight. When there was no one to guide her, she rotated in place. Due to the heaviness of the wings, her crawling was extremely challenging, and eventually, the wings fell apart, but she continued to crawl with the tattered wings until she was covered in bruises. Her performance deeply moved all the spectators, and many of them were brought to tears.
Xue Qinzhi's Live Performance
In this space, Zhang Wei used his resonant voice to recite poetry. There were also two individuals, a man and a woman (Mr. 4.0 and Er Yu), constantly using their bodies to support a house. The house continuously collapsed as they exerted force and pressure on each other, but they kept rebuilding it. Another man (Xu Weihua) carried a bucket of water in his hands and slowly walked along the edge of the performance area. Eventually, he removed his clothes and poured the water over himself, starting to take a shower. He then collected the water from the ground back into the bucket and continued "washing" himself. Outside the performance area, a person completely covered in a strange costume (Lu Feifei) wandered around. Unable to see, she fumbled around, occasionally touching the walls and sometimes encountering the audience. In the darkness, she experienced her own journey.
Xiao Xu taking a shower on the scene corresponds to the shower before entering the gas chamber in the concentration camp
Lu Feifei as a Faceless Presence
Suddenly, a group of people began to gather and huddled together, shouting in unison, "It's time," and the stomping of their feet grew louder and louder. At this moment, a man in a military coat, holding half a bottle of alcohol, exuding the scent of liquor, burst into the performance area. He arrived in a drunken manner, inviting people to drink with him. He sat beside the ruins on a sofa, set out liquor and peanuts, and several people gathered around, drinking together. They resembled the homeless people in the city, wandering on the streets, drinking by abandoned sofas and table lamps, chatting. This was artist Xin Wangjun's performance.
Xin Wangjun's performance with the audience drinking
With the help of the crowd, Xue Qinzhi crawled out of a door from one of the exhibition halls and removed the wings. In the "metaphorical" exhibition hall, the performance was also coming to a close. The performers gathered next to the black curtain, each one holding a corner, and slowly pulled it open. Xiao Shengjie, who had been sitting quietly on a chair for an hour, dressed in all black with black-rimmed glasses, appeared in front of everyone. In the dimly lit room, the performance ended. The applause never ceased.
Xue Qinzhi's performance
The moment the black curtain was lifted marked the end of the performance
Curtain call
This performance deeply immersed every audience member and left them deeply moved by the performers' acts and the atmosphere of the event. After the intermission, it was the forum section, which I hosted. Almost no audience members left; everyone listened attentively. The Gao Brothers introduced the concept of urban theater in their performance "Embrace" from a practitioner's perspective. Tian Gebing talked about his experience founding the "Paper Tiger" theater company and the early involvement of performance artists in his theater. Luo Haiming was a theater director from Germany, and he discussed the concept of theater from a theoretical standpoint. Hao Qingsong and Aier talked about performance and theater from the perspective of contemporary art.
Forum
Tian Gebing speaking at the forum
At the forum venue, the audience participated actively
This workshop explored the possibility of combining performance art and theater, questioning established concepts about performance and behavior. In traditional understandings, behavior art is seen as a conceptual expression using the body as material and medium, especially within the context of contemporary Chinese performance art, which often draws from and emulates the memories of performance art from the 1960s and 1970s. There is also a strict distinction between behavior art and theater. Similarly, in the realm of theater, understanding remains quite conservative, failing to recognize the significant changes that have taken place in theater worldwide. Theater has evolved from being text and stage-centered to being text-less and non-theatrical, shifting from postmodern theater to a focus on releasing life and existence, much like performance art.
This workshop effectively dissolved established notions and understandings of behavior and theater. Among the participants were some performance artists, who typically create their own works. However, in this performance, each artist became a part of the theater, fostering interaction and connections between their behaviors and those of other performers. Theater performers, musicians, and dancers all exhibited independent characteristics, drawing inspiration from the poetry of Paul Celan, making their movements, bodies, and sounds akin to performance art.
From a theatrical perspective, this performance can be seen as a complete theater piece. However, from a behavioral perspective, it is a behavioral work executed in a theatrical manner. Additionally, it dissolved the role of the director, empowering each performer to be their own director and actor simultaneously.
This "Performance Art and Postmodern Theater" not only explored the relationship between behavior and theater but also delved into the relationship between poetry and reality, reality and virtuality, directors and performers, and performers and the audience. Luo Haiming named this performance "Field Art," Hao Qingsong saw tragedy in it, and Tian Gebing felt warmth in this cold winter. For each participating performer, it was an exhilarating experience, finding joy in the collisions and inspirations among each other. Cao Kefei and the author saw the possibilities they had hoped for in the convergence of behavior and theater.
Cao Kefei in workshop rehearsal