Artist Lectures on Oct 14, Jinyue Children’s Art Museum
14:00-15:30
Jason LIM(Singapore)
Clay and Performance Art: From Weight to Resonance
In this artist talk, Singaporean artist Jason Lim reflects on a creative practice spanning over three decades that encompasses ceramics, performance art, installation, sound, and video. Guided by the five natural elements—earth, water, fire, wind, and void—his work explores the subtle and fragile relationships between the body, materials, nature, and time.
From his early performance art to his recent, ongoing exploration of ceramic bells and listening vessels, Lim has moved beyond viewing clay merely as a material for shaping objects; instead, he regards it as a living entity capable of embodying memory, resistance, transformation, and transience. Repetitive actions, sustained physical engagement, and a meditative creative process serve as his means of contemplating impermanence, fragility, and the unpredictability of life.
Drawing upon Asian cultural traditions, Eastern philosophy, and the spiritual essence of traditional ceramic forms, his work navigates the space between the material and the intangible. In his practice, destruction becomes transformation, silence holds echoes, and the traces of an action persist long after the body has departed.
This talk invites the audience to slow down, relearn the acts of observing and listening, and reflect on how fleeting experiences leave lasting echoes in memory—and on how art can serve as a space for contemplation, perception, and the re-establishment of the connection between the individual and the world.
16:00-17:30
Eduardo CARDOSO AMATO(Brazil)
Improvisation in Performance Art
Eduardo is a Brazilian artist, and this talk explores improvisation in performance art and the concept of open source performance. They will share some results from their research, introduce the Open Source Performance Map, a map of encounters and initiatives in performance art, and present PF Casa de Estudos, an artist-run space for residencies and artistic exchange that they founded in Curitiba, Brazil.
Artist Lectures on Oct 15, A4 Art Msueum 4F
14:00-15:30
Natascha MOSCHINI(Switzerland)
UNDINE
Basel-based performer and dance maker Natascha Moschini presents her current research project UNDINE, exploring the European myth of a water spirit living among humans.
The project began in 2025 during daily walks along the Rhine, where the river revealed itself as a layered space — at once a natural space, an economic resource, a transport route and a surface for longing.
Moschini draws on two literary sources: Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué’s Romantic fairy tale Undine (1811), in which a water spirit gains a soul through love, only to return to the water when betrayed — and Ingeborg Bachmann’s Undine geht (1961), which reimagines Undine as a woman who indicts mankind for claiming and instrumentalizing her, and who finally leaves — not out of revenge, but exhaustion.
Few figures capture this tension between the human world and the aqueous world as precisely as Undine — which makes her a fitting lens for a question that has become urgent today: what happens if we stop treating water merely as a resource, and start understanding it as part of a relationship our own lives depend on? At a time when humanity’s yearly supply of renewable resources is already exhausted by mid-year, and when climate change leaves many European rivers running increasingly low, this question of reciprocity between humans and nature demands new attention.
Moschini takes Undine as a template for this inquiry, reimagining her as a contemporary figure who mediates between these two worlds.
During her residencies in Macao and Zhujiajiao, a historic water town near Shanghai, Moschini extended her research, looking at the worship of the sea goddess Mazu and the transformation of water towns through tourism. There too, the same question resurfaces: what does it mean for a community to see water not just as a resource, but as something it lives in relationship with?
This research is supported by a residency grant from Fachausschuss Darstellende Künste BS/BL & Pro Helvetia Shanghai.
16:00-17:30
Eliane BERTSCHI（Switzerland）
Among Dragon Ruins
Some say dark time, some say apocalypse-time. In darkness, stories begin where the visible reaches its limits. This lecture journeys into the Swiss Alps and the myths and legends in which landscapes are never silent: they speak of forces, dangers, and relationships between humans and the more-than-human world—and of how these might resonate with the present. Through the figure of the dragon—both a mythical creature and a name for a raging mountain torrent—I explore how these stories might help us imagine today’s climatic and geological changes, and how darkness can open a space for other ways of seeing, listening to, and understanding the world.
As part of my research project, I worked with writing, filmmaking, choreography, and installation. I will briefly share some of these works and the questions that emerged through them.
HONINART Art Center
15:00 – 16:30
Vanessa HEER(Switzerland)
Yodeling Workshop on Natural Yodeling and Vocal Chants
Artist Vanessà Heer invites you to a “natural yodeling” workshop.
Through vocal and physical exercises, participants will take their first steps in learning this vocal style.
Performance on Oct 17, A4 Art Msueum
Performance on Oct 18,Jinyue Children’s Art Museum
Performance on Oct 19，Nongyuan International Art Village
HOST ORGANISATION
UP-ON Performance Art Archive
CO-HOST ORGANISATIONS
A4 Art Museum, HONIN Art Center, Jinyue Children’s Art Museum, Nongyuan International Art Village
SUPPORTERS
The University Of Iowa, Bbeyond, Donglai Art, Finnish Culture Foundation&Finnish Cultural Foundation Lapland，Pro Helvetia Shanghai, the Swiss Arts Council
SPECIAL THANKS
Deng Le, Dong Nu, Tang Yong(Mike), Shi Xiaodong, Wang Yanxin, Ye Di Shan Yu, YES FAITH, Zaijingqi AI Tansuo Space
SUPPORTING MEDIA
Art Monthly, Humanities & Art, Yi Xin Yi Yi
WORK TEAM
Project Director: ZHOU Bin
Project Management: Jody HUANG
Working Group: MM Bean, Iris CHEN, Jody HUANG, Sonia LIU, LIU Yuantao, Lyric LI, Ni Jia , WANG Wenfei, ZHANG Jiang
Academic Observers: HUANG Jinglan, JIANG Yijia, LIU Chengying, Sophie FAN, Sunny SUN, Zhu Zhu
