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Translating bodies. A transdisciplinary performance by The Present

 
Picture: Translating bodies. A transdisciplinary performance by The Present

Translating bodies. A transdisciplinary performance by The Present

Samuel Toro Pérez; Tian Jun Wong; Fang Yun Yang

      Title
      • Translating bodies. A transdisciplinary performance by The Present
      Subtitle
      • ZHdK-Avina Fonds 2018
      Author
      Date
      • 2018
      Description
      • Translating bodies is the third collaboration of the international and transdisciplinary artist group The Present formed by the choreographer Fang Yun Yang (Taiwan), the visual artist Tian Jun Wong (Hong Kong) and the musician Samuel Toro Pérez (Austria / Switzerland). Since our first collaboration in 2017 in Hong Kong we have been aiming for a constant process of rethinking the relationship between our original disciplines and other art forms as well as exploring scenographic potentials in public space.

        Our current project started with the question whether body movement and behavior in daily-life moments could have an aesthetic quality. During a research phase in our individual hometowns Taipei, Hong Kong and Zurich we had been observing and collecting impressions and materials which we brought together during the final working phase in Zurich. This process of sharing, recontextualizing and composing raised further questions linked to aspects such as individual and collective variations of perspective based on different cultural backgrounds and aesthetics.

        Our interest in the Toni-Areal Zurich was based on its hybrid quality between public building, art school campus and former industrial infrastructure. We observed the people moving around inside the building and discussed ways how the architecture was forming those people’s actions, pace and communication. Consequently we decided to stick to the building itself in terms of scenography. Having these thoughts in mind we started to explore the building anew, looking for spots with an ambiguous potential between characteristic and neutral quality.

        As a next step we asked ourselves how privacy and intimacy could be possible inside the Toni-Areal and started analyzing possible ways and spots how and where students, professors and visitors could have a private moment for themselves. There are kitchens, small rooms for hanging out etc. but in fact the people inside are always exposed. Most doors have windows and the building is illuminated 24/7 based on a high grade of automatization. We decided to refer to darkness as a symbol of privacy within our project and started looking for dark spaces in the public part of the Toni-Areal (excluding the concert halls which are publicly accessible but closed by the security staff at midnight).

        There are many small staircases which vertically cross the campus like chimneys. Some of them have a small room on every floor between the main hallway and this staircase, a corridor between corridors so to speak. The friction between its quality as a “non-place” and our installation dealing with different spaces and space-related actions turned out to be fruitful. Also we found out that the light sensors inside these emergency exit areas were easily accessible and quite simple to block. Thus we started to take over these rooms, projecting videos and sounds from the original footage from our hometowns as well as footage from our tryouts and rehearsals (dancing, musical improvisation, interviews, soundwalks, etc). The whole setup would consist of two of these small rooms as installation spaces and the staircase in between as a performance space.


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