Where should I go, 2022
Performance 11mins
Movement by Ricardo Vilas Freire, Jieun Lee, Mallory Yanhan Qiu
Writing by J Jiang
Recording & Sound by Mallory Yanhan Qiu
Directed by Mallory Yanhan Qiu
Videography Credit: Xiaoyuan Lu
Where should I go, Performance Setup | Courtesy of the Artist
Performance Movement Score:
0:00-0:30 (0.5mins)
You're gonna enter from the wrong floor doors. And you start to slowly explore (walk, look around, touch, sit, etc) the layer space.
0:30-3:00 (2.5mins)
You’ll try to sneak to the right floor. If you meet someone in the front face, you have to go back to the original floor, and try it again to go to your right floor.
3:00-6:00 (3mins)
When you successfully arrive at the right floor. You start to use repetitive movements to explore your own layer. (extend your body with the space lines, overlap your body with lines, do abnormal moves on the stair, go backwards, make geometry shapes with your body, etc)
6:00-10:00 (4mins)
Now, you run to other floor layers to explore and occupy the space with your body. When you go across other people, passing through them with wired movements.
Also, you can interact with other people on the same floor.
Hello Doctor | Writing by J Jiang
Hello doctor.
I come to see you once a week. This is the fourth time. Yesterday was my one-month fever anniversary. I drank a whole bottle of champagne. Admittedly, I don't know what you can cure me, because I can't describe my symptoms clearly either.
How have you been this week?
Are you awake enough? Can you still recall what it was like to have a fever?
I shouldn't have asked you in this aggressive way. For the past month, I have always been in dreams. Dreams become continuous, and the boundaries between reality and dreams become blurred. Perhaps the only difference is the things in dreams always stand out at night. Reality is always swallowed up by the darkness and smoothed out by the snow. My eyes are a little wet.
In my dream, I met another doctor. He said I got a terminal illness, not only a simple fever. He wanted me to be happier, not because death is imminent, but felicitated that very few people in the line of human beings are suffering from this terminal illness. “You should be happy that you are the minority,” I asked him what does this disease called, and he said it is called Thermal-conduction disease. Normal heat transfer requires contact, like warming your hands with hot cocoa, but I don't. Anything I can see that is hotter than me will execute a heat transfer with me. Someone very anxious in the line can get 50 Celsius degrees on her heart. I have to bite the bullet and come with her once. That's why I'm sick. I asked him if there is a cure, and he answered: yes. Once everyone is fine, you are fine.
Until now, do you believe me? Do you respect me?
There may be nothing in this world except belief and respect. These modern medicines and treatments that you have learned will be witchcraft and alchemy to the descendants of our descendants. But you still have to believe. So I respect you.
What is the consensus for our conversation? My illness, right? Are we still equal?
I think we should be equal. Perhaps the only thing that makes us unequal is the knowledge regarding my body. But in fact, our knowledge is half and half without the indestructible part. You get the brain and I control my own heart. The diagnosis in the dream is different from what you judged. You told me the bacterial infection of Streptococcus pyogenes is the reason, I still go get the medicine you prescribed anyway. Can you respect me as much as I respect you?
Some people say that dreams are the opposite, while others say that dreams are prophecies. Which do you believe? Which do you respect?
You don't have to rush to answer me. I haven't finished my dream yet. The doctor in my dream is also terminally ill. But it is a very common one, one of the regular cancers. He said he envied me.
Do you envy me? I am having a fever for more than a month, and you can't cure it. Will you remember me?