Touch? Tapping is so00 nice!
Lecture performance, 20-25 min, 2020
English Voice: Francesca Hawker
Performed at Radio Kootwijk, Netherlands

*In written Chinese, Chinese sign language, American sign language,  spoken Chinese and English





This lecture performance is a post-ableist experiment through multi-layering of languages, and the in-betweens. It is mainly delivered through me typing, with my friend Francesca’s voice reading out what appears on the screen. It challenges the expectations of an ableist “efficient”society, and creates pauses, time to breathe, space for mistakes and the playfulness of delay.

The shifts between American sign language, Chinese sign language, spoken and written Chinese, and English, makes“the fluidity and new body land” possible, as what I have learnt/unlearnt from being with my Deaf friends and collaborators.

It also tapped into Protactile movement and language, lead by the DeafBlind community in the U.S, and John Lee Clark’s Protactile poem based on touch, and his Distantism theory criticizing “the privileging of the distance senses of hearing and vision”, bringing the audience into the in-between languages, gestures, and the possibilities in the not-yet-becoming.





performance excerp, editing/Raffia Li
camera/Baha Görkem Yalım