To all the shapes falling at different/the same present/absent times/time

To all the shapes falling at different/the same present/absent times/time

I-我 we/us-我们 you-你/你们 They- TA/TA们, (

) question mark
single-channel video & performance, 20 min, 2021
performers: Raffia Li, Miiel Ferráez, Marie Tučková́, Lou Lou Sainsbury, Miyoung Chang, Maoyi, and Yanfei Li (in video)
at Understory Chant, The Dutch Art Institute & Sonsbeek 20-24, 25 August 2021, Posttheater, Arnhem, Netherlands

A celebration of fluidity, fugitivity, friendship, and belongingness to nowhere/elsewhere, in the presence of the absent.

The performance is multi-attentional, moments unfolding across the space on stage and off. It begins with a subversion of a question in which syllables are overstressed. The fragility of language is emphasised. Miyoung, Lou Lou, and Marie are seemingly engaging in learning, understanding and repeating words that are not clear to them. We are witness to an informal language lesson through pointing gestures. Raffia disrupts the proscenium framework descending on a ladder, Raffia’s first piece of furniture, found on moving to the Netherlands. She walks while supporting the ladder, a structure that typically supports you, becomes a crutch.

-Descripiton excerps from Harun Morrison

How do we find rhythm with each other? How does language connect us with each other, and how is this rhythm disrupted by the virus? A playfulness emerges, a melancholy, through food, through song, through which we may or may not have belonginging. I’m struck by the vignettes, the disruption of theatre space, which becomes a microcosm of the disruption of the study program, finding a place to be in the Netherlands…ways to find commonality and how to cross borders, how to bridge corners, how to care for each other in this time.

-Review by Barby Asante

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

Raffia Li 融

Raffia
Li 融