2015 Festival Review | The 3rd UP-ON International Live Art Festival

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The artist invited nine audience members to stand in the center of the space, arranged neatly in three rows. She directed their poses and movements, photographing them from various angles.

The performance takes place in a space beside one wall of the gallery. The artist places a round patch of artificial green turf on the floor, along with a chair and a soft plastic grass ball—transforming the area into a kind of installation.

Dressed entirely in black, the artist enters the space and sits on the chair, observing the audience gathered outside the boundary. Then they stand beside the chair and invite one audience member to enter the space.

The audience member becomes the primary material of the work—a living being, full of thought and emotion, unpredictable and never to be controlled.

Facing this person, the artist engages in a silent, intuitive exchange: testing, approaching, or avoiding, responding to the present moment. The interaction may evolve in any number of ways, but never through force. The participant may leave at any time.

At a certain point, the artist tosses the green ball into the crowd. Whoever catches it—one or more people—may enter the space, beginning a new round of exchange, becoming part of the work.

During the performance, the artist takes out a radio and tunes into a live broadcast. The unpredictable nature of the radio adds another layer of encounter to the space, connecting the constructed environment with the real world beyond it.

The work unfolds openly, improvisationally, creating in-the-moment possibilities between people, between bodies. It quietly probes the power dynamics between artist and audience, the ambiguous intimacy between strangers, and the potential for the unexpected.

When the artist finally switches off the radio, the performance ends—though the possibility of further interaction may or may not continue in life beyond the work.

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Look up, UP-ON the gallery ceiling, a dirty glass window for cleaning,

and then a circular rooftop for a ritual gesture – no game.

Standing within high walls, the artist presses their forehead against a knife fixed to the wall—the blade’s tip pointed directly at the center of the forehead. They remain motionless.

Two buckets are placed several meters apart. The artist pours water from one bucket into the other, then returns the now-empty bucket to its original position. They walk back to the full bucket, lift it, and pour the water again into the empty one. This process is repeated over and over.

Then, the artist swings a PVC pipe approximately four meters long through the air and space, revealing its tension and producing sound.

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The performance takes place indoors. The artist begins by removing her pants and cutting the back of her hand, smearing the blood onto her white underwear.

Using red yarn, she winds the scattered audience members together, eventually tying both ends of the yarn to two doors at opposite ends of the room.

During the winding process, she randomly hands out eight boxes to audience members. Each box contains a different item.

After completing this, the artist bares her upper body. Starting from one end of the room, she unties the red yarn and unwraps it from the audience, rewrapping it around her own body instead.

Each time she encounters an audience member holding a box, she opens it and responds with an action based on its contents.

The items inside the boxes include: a red rose, a tube of lipstick, a black marker, a condom, a single high-heeled shoe, a book (Le Clézio’s Urania), real and fake fruits, a tube of toothpaste, a toothbrush, and an empty water bottle.

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When I first saw the gallery space at the Chengdu University in Sichuan, China, I was immediately impressed with the circular entrance to the gallery. It had a large round glass ceiling with a circular area of grass in the middle on the outside. However, it took several days for an idea for my performance to crystallize and settle. Nevertheless, thanks to a series of events, my performance ultimately concluded the festival.

My dear and courageous HuJiayi Jiabao was ahead of me with her introverted performance on a stepladder where she was seated on top of the ladder on the roof of the university. She was bandaged in packaging foil with abrasive nails and working tools underneath; so close to her nearly naked body. Furthermore, she needed to make her action culminate with the sunset. I was waiting for my performance which would take place in a closet next to the gallery, dressed in my costume which was a cross between a Czech peasant woman and an Indian shaman. I became tired of waiting and with the support of my friend Amien I went to the university area and began my performance with the lighting of sacred incense from a South American Palo Santo tree. My intention was to clear the university space as well as viewers from potential negative energy and attune the audience with my ritual performance of UNITY through the use of smoke and scent.

My performance started sometime in the afternoon when I started collecting fallen leaves and natural materials from trees and shrubs on the university campus in Chengdu. Once more, I walked across the grassy surroundings as well as the natural rampant roof and I collected local plants everywhere that I could. I wanted to work with authentic natural materials from the site. Afterwards I used the plants during my performance by arranging them on my white spread out skirt while sitting in the gallery on a black stone floor. I blew egg whites and yolk into a bowl and mixed it with green barley powder and Chinese ink. I used a strainer to spray these natural colors over the arrangement of plants and leaves, thus creating an imprint of the local nature on my skirt canvas .

After removing the plants and distributing them in a circle around my skirt, an alter of my whole process began to emerge. An image was created, nature’s fingerprint. Then I took the skirt off and placed a lit candle into the center. There were also lit candles around me while I was performing, which had a magical effect as it grew darker outside. Meanwhile it got totally dark outside and it was necessary to illuminate the space for the further part of the performance.

I continued with the use of 11 eggs which I had prepared, which I gradually pierced from both sides and offered to the remaining 11 members of the Chinese zodiac. The egg; the symbol which I worked with is typical for Spring and Easter in the Czech Republic. It is a symbol of life, fertility and duality. I called to my fellow performers “I am a horse and I’m looking for a goat to help me!” When the person with the sign of the goat came forward, I handed them an egg which they blew out onto a space on my skirt which they had chosen.

Then they stuck the egg onto a bamboo stick and colored half of the egg with the left over natural green-black-egg paint. Once all 12 astrological signs/people ( horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog, pig, rat, buffalo, tiger, hare, dragon and snake) completed this action, we spontaneously combined our yin yang egg shells in the middle of the skirt alter. All for one and one for all.

This group activity created a symbol for the link between all of the astrological signs of the zodiac and the symbolic connection of these signs with all of the different types of people on the planet. It also symbolized unity among human beings. We worked together, we created a piece together.

The work was once again symbolically concluded with all of us taking the skirt from the bottom part of the gallery to the grassy roof-top, where we laid it down and lit a candle. Symbolically and ritually we put all of the plant life from the skirt back into nature. What got to the bottom, we put back on top. The people became one, the circle closed.

All of my performances in China, Hong Kong, Chengdu and Xi’an, were connected to each other, and were linked to the theme of unity, complexity, harmony, balancing opposites, as well as the materialization of symbols that connect us as people instead of dividing us. I worked with the object of the traditional female skirt, which is known in all traditions of folk culture. I drew inspiration from Czech, pagan, and Slavic folk culture, but especially from Easter traditions and Aztec shamanistic and folk rituals.

Through my work the skirt became an alter and space for my piece. By putting the skirt on I felt grounded, and once taking it off I felt liberated towards higher vibrations. The circle of the skirt has to do with the symbolism of Tao, Yin Yang, infinity, repetition, cycles, closing of circles, immortality, the flow of energy, the beginning and the end. There is concealed movement in the skirt, which is life. The circle is magical. By getting into and out of the dress I was born and was opening up to the new, sometimes the unknown. In each performance there were moments which existed by themselves. It was a live process, which bewitched me. Thank you to all, it was a wonderfully intense experience to be with all of you.

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I enter the building and look around: empty white space, black stone floor, hard stone, slate. The main space: mobile walls standing close to the stabile walls, between the wheels hidden bricks. I take a brick and grind with it the floor. One to one: one brick one stone … and some mediating water. Red grinding black, black grinding red.

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The piece was staged in an unused purple room discovered while scouting for a location. Before the performance began, the space was darkened.

The performance started in the dim, open purple room, accompanied by live music to shape the atmosphere. I sat in one corner of the space, wearing a white dress and covered in a sheer white veil.

After a moment, I lit a match beneath the veil, its brief glow illuminating my form. As each match burned out, I lit another, and another… Moving with the faint light, I crawled slowly along the floor within the veil until I found a candle and lit it.

Still within the veil, I gradually removed the dress. My body moved slowly across the floor, then came to a stillness.

As the music faded, the performance came to an end.

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Standing in silence, waiting for the wind to rise—indeed, it rises. I retreat to the table and chairs, nail down a board, saw the table, and sit in silence. The wind continues.

I place a clenched fist on the table and pour plaster over my arm, waiting quietly as it sets and hardens… Then I stand, loosen my fist, and let the cast fall naturally. I pick up a set of steel letter punches and arrange them to spell “EXIST.” With a hammer, I carve the word into the surface.

Once more, I stand silently, holding up a fan blade and dry branches. The wind comes.

End.

Title: Fugue — drawn from a sixteenth-century musical form, the fugue, a word that also carries the meaning “to flee.” This is a work in mourning, a tribute to the departed.

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I inflated a red balloon and placed it inside my clothing. Then I went around shaking hands with each audience member. I invited one female audience member to interact with me. The two of us each placed one end of a red string into our mouths and slowly began drawing it in. In the middle of the string was a fishhook. I was the first to draw the hook into my mouth, while the participant eventually gave up pulling.

I invited her onto the stage and said, “I have a surprise for you.” Then I pulled down a red helium balloon that had floated above the stage and shook it forcefully, causing a shower of RMB bills to rain down from it—money falling everywhere.

I moved my body close to the balloon’s string and began rotating my head, wrapping the string tightly around my neck, round and round, until the balloon descended. I removed a needle from an ink bottle attached beneath the balloon using my mouth and held it between my lips. Then, using black ink, I wrote on the balloon: “A dark cloud.”

Facing the audience with arms outstretched, I said, “Please give me a hug.” One woman stepped forward and embraced me.

The performance ended.

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Correspondence is a series of works, and this is No. 3 in the series. The starting point of the piece is an exploration of the countless possibilities that emerge when a chaotic state within a self-feedback system is disrupted and gives rise to a new chaotic state.

Through contemplating the entanglement of bodily presence and brainwaves, I use technical equipment to generate sound. The real-time sound produced then affects my own body, which in turn responds and changes—thus entering a continuous loop.

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The artist opens a local Chengdu newspaper from that day and randomly reads out headlines such as “Shopping Frenzy” and “Massive Discounts.” After reading, she places the newspaper on the floor and pours 1 kilogram of rice onto it. She then invites four audience members to join her. Each of them, including the artist, uses their right hand to grab as much rice as possible. They stand in a line, facing five empty cups placed at a distance. With arms outstretched, palms open, they aim at one of the cups positioned near the wall across from them. They remain standing still for a moment, then cover their foreheads with their left hands and begin walking slowly toward the targeted cup. Once they arrive, they try to pour the rice in their hands into the cup as accurately as possible.

Afterward, they return to the starting point. Using a red plastic toy gun, the artist fires red plastic pellets one by one at the rice-filled cup. Each shot falls short in a different arc. None of the pellets hit the target.

The artist inflated a plastic glove and set it upright in the water beside the artificial river in a residential complex.