What Would You Say/
Hear If You Could?
ongoing series on empathetic listening, creating poetry with ordinary people，
reimagining new ways
for public listening,
sharing, and intimacy
What would you hear if you could? (V)
June, 2023
[sound installation, performance]
SYSTEM, shanghai, china
Writing diaries became an act of survival during the Covid days.
How can these acts of witness be listened to and preserved in an age of forgetfulness?
108 bags of vibrating disquiet filled with whispered secrets.
What would you say if you could? (VI)
February, 2022
[public intervention, performance]
WU KANG ROAD, shanghai, china
Public intervention under the trees of Shanghai's popular Wu Kang Lu, where the artist sat under the tree during the whole of Valentine's Day and invited strangers to whisper their secrets.
What would you say if you could? (III)
February, 2023
[performance]
WU KANG ROAD, shanghai, china
public performance on Wu Kang Lu "the most romantic street" of Shanghai leading up to Valentine's day, exploring secrecy, intimacy, and the things we keep private from one another in our most intimate relationships.
What would you say if you could? (II)
May, 2021
[performance]
TRI SPACE, shanghai, china
Interactive performance with audience, where strangers were connected by pipes to speak and listen.
What would you hear if you could? (I)
October, 2021
[sound installation]
HOME LIFE, shanghai, china
fly net, 25 bluetooth earphones, 25 second-hand cellphones
Trapped voices, unheard voices.
For a year, in nine countries, in borderlands, refugee camps, homes of migrant workers, I repeatedly asked women "What would you say if you could?"
The Installation creates a new way for listeners to engage with foreign, unknown voices, and tests the boundaries of empathetic listening.
Who Is Responsible for the Suffering of Your Mother?
ongoing series interrogating tenderness and tension between mother
& daughter, and their performance of pain for the other.
Who Is Responsible for the Suffering of Your Mother (I)
July, 2021
[photography, performance]
shanghai, china
Every Wednesday, my mother and I sat across from one another at the acupuncturist's, witness to each other's performance of pain.
Who Is Responsible for the Suffering of Your Mother (II)
April, 2023
[live performance]
SYSTEM, shanghai, china
Who Is Responsible for the Suffering of Your Mother (III)
April, 2023
[self-published poetry zine]
shanghai, china
limited editions of hand-stitched zines
ongoing series of collaborative poetry &
photography created with marginalized groups across China, told through their own voices, commissioned monthly by LIFE Magazine China
retelling a 3,000 year-old myth on an ancient archeological site through butoh & poetry
Vol. 02
Further than
Home
restaurant workers from ethnic groups, far-away homelands, who found their way to Shanghai
(in collaboration with Hailun Ma)
The Chanting Earth
Vol. 03
Our Present,
Their Past Lives
Qinghai's young nomadic youth have left their homeland, yet they eventually return, as "all leaves must return to their roots." What do they hold closest to their hearts?
Vol. 04
Future Fugue
Imagined conversations with chatbots.
Traditional ink-making is a disappearing art form,
how might it be revived through poetry?
During Shanghai's city-wide lockdown, the four walls of our bedroom became all we knew. How might poetry exist in every speck of flour, every friendly dust mite? How did the walls open up to reveal a fourth dimension?
Vol. 06
Trapped Home
in the Fourth
Dimension
Vol. 07
2064
a poetry-film script in collaboration with filmmaker Christopher Doyle, reimagining his classic "2046" in contemporary Shanghai
Vol. 08
If Not,
Winter
Chinese translation of Sappho's poetry in collaboration with poet Anne Carson
