Explore outwardly, and look inwardly. Space and mind can penetrate each other until the nature of both is changed. At this point the body is not insignificant, but vital.
Shared by Song Yi
In the evening of September 20, starting from the two interpenetrating points of space and body, Song Yi explained her unique frame of mind around “why/how to pay attention to the body” with examples and asked about the meaning of physicality in the present. We had an intense discussion with the thought that “the body is slowly expanding from its curled state as it comprehends the complexity of the current context”. The gradual loss of bodily sensitivity and mobility has led Song Yi to view the world through her own body, with a view to returning to more fundamental issues in her artistic practice. In The Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty argues that knowledge is “acquired through the senses,” and that the body has its own unique way of thinking and understanding before consciousness, that it is the skin that helps us to “embed” the world, to “seize and possess” it. It is the universal medium that helps us to “embed” ourselves in the skin of the world, to “grasp and possess” it. One should use the whole body to guide the spirit, and a life based on the senses can be very pure. In contemporary life, we are gradually forgetting the essence of physical experience and perception, and it is worthwhile to return to inward perception through “walking” or artistic creation. I recently read Nane Shepherd’s The Living Mountain because I love to walk, and the experience of being in the mountains is closely related to the body. For me, walking is the best way to be able to untether the brain from the body. The physical body is very permeable when walking, and the rhythm of movement of a sustained long walk can lighten the body in a way that can’t be gained by any means that requires mechanical climbing. The lightness and agility experienced by the body in thin air and the feeling of openness given by the opening up of space bring a wild and transcendent thrill. There are countless secrets hidden in the mountain, surging between me and it. This is a way of looking at time: the body also thinks. Knowledge is not linear, but comes from unexpected directions and corners, endless, to be explored. Inspired by her artistic creations, Song Yi summarizes a unique way of thinking that is not limited by any discipline.
The body in ecstasy is derived from the English word ecstasy, which refers to the state of being in a trance, full of energy. Song Yi cites Liu Xiangchen’s video epic “Ashik: The Last Recitation,” which chronicles the wandering life of the Uyghur Ashik, as a case study in explaining this state. Through the ancient way of chanting, Ahik expresses his love to God and realizes his inner repentance. See one of the Ashikhs of Shakha: Abhimati chanting with tears in his eyes, “If life were a dress, you would spend your whole life sewing it, and if you tried to wear it, it would end up being nothing more than a sleeveless tunic (shroud).” Words are not the only way to draw on the experience of others as they physically link Allah’s experience to His world. Tranquilizers, fasting and abstinence, yoga, alcohol, etc. can make one courageous enough to leap out of one’s pigeonhole and draw experiences from otherworldly beings such as artists, witches, and mystics. True thinkers are the ones who turn their tears into thoughts, and their thoughts are obsessive.
Screenshot of Liu Xiangchen’s Documentary “Ashik: The Last Wanderer
Among the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, there are some people “Ashik” who hold a special attitude of survival and have a special way of life. It is difficult to express them with a certain word or phrase in Chinese. They are troubadours, obsessives or some wandering souls. In the Uyghur-populated areas of Xinjiang, especially in large and small towns in the oases of Kashgar and Hotan in the south of Xinjiang, you used to be able to see men chanting songs with sapai (a kind of Uyghur body percussive musical instrument) in the streets and lanes, and people called them “sapaiqi” (meaning “those who play sapai well”) or “ahik” (meaning “those who are good at playing the sapai”). (meaning “one who plays the sapa’i well”) or “ahik”. The name “ashik” refers to the songs they sing. The word “ahik” means “one who is obsessed (with God)”.
’Funny Body‘
The comic body is the second category in Song Yi’s frame of mind: the scenes of the Wall Street political parade carnival; the sheep-leading ceremony of the Shi Gong in the Western Qinling region; the nonsensical dialogues in the Kezhi ceremony of the Yi ethnic group, which make the gods laugh; the Tibetan debate on why rabbits do not have horns; the folk narrative logics of the “scattering of the eyes” and the “sifting of the edges to beat the nets” of the teahouses of Sichuan; and the shamanic rituals of many regions are all embodiments of the “comic body”. The folk narrative logic of “sifting the edge of the net” in Sichuan teahouses and the shamanic rituals of many regions have embodiments of the “funny body”.
Screenshot from Meng Xiaowei’s documentary “Preserving the Twelve Perfections
Melati Suryodarmo, Exergie
I was reminded of Southeast Asian performance artist Melati Suryodarmo’s Exergie – a dance on butter, where one’s body slips and slides and gets up again until it runs out of steam. “All my consciousness controls my body, but at the same time, the risks become unpredictable. I could lose control, but the will to get back up is more important to me. It’s about my attitude towards this particular moment in my life.”
‘ The superfluous, despised body ’
In the third category, Toshiharu Okada’s contemporary Japanese theater, with its exaggerated nonsense and small gestures, is an expression of the body that has no place in the neo-liberal world; and works such as Maita Tsuchikata’s and Kazuo Shirakaba’s use the despised and perceived dirty body to draw out the tension with the norms of society.
Screenshot of Toshikazu Okada’s play ’The Five Days of March‘
’Bodies in traditional spaces and rituals‘
The fourth category is very interesting: the body sitting on the kang in the Kashgar teahouse is related to the height of the tea, while the posture of people crossing their arms to talk about the price at the live animal trading site may be a continuation of the tradition.
‘Breaking free of the repressed body‘
Song Yi compares the movements of Sophie’s twirling dance with the Ansai Waist Drums in Chen Kaige’s “Yellow Earth”. Kawamoto Yuko, a renowned contemporary Japanese dance artist, focuses on the “turning” movement of Chinese folk dance, which she sees as the beauty of the art form that does not use “turning”. Song Yi believes that this kind of physical state, in which some of the joints of the body exert force and do not focus on spinning, reflects the body’s struggle to break free from repression. Sufi spinning, on the other hand, shows a more integrated and unified state. Such interesting tangents are thought-provoking.
’The disciplined body vs. the de-sheltered body‘
The last contrast is between the de-sheltered body and the disciplined body: a group dance organized by the government at 9am in Kashgar during Eid al-Fitr (the biological equivalent of 6am in Beijing) and a spontaneous dance by street children. Song Yi defines a “de-sheltered body” as one that is broken, exploring, and constantly adjusting. Cases in point: the ethnic minorities swimming in their clothes and the Han Chinese sitting around fishing on the bank of the Ili River in Xinjiang; the Kirgiz Nongjia mother and daughter frolicking freely in their costumes in a sacred spring.
The deconstructed body gives the everyday world the magic of “light”. While using the body to understand the complex context of the present, it is also slowly expanding from a curled-up state. Finally, Song Yi leaves us with open questions about the meaning of “physicality” in the present, and how to stimulate physicality to create “sense of touch”. Regarding the sense of touch, I would like to quote two passages from The Living Mountain: “Belief in the physical body has given contemporary meaning to the body.
More and more people are distancing themselves from nature. We have drifted away from the fact that our minds are shaped precisely by the experience of the body that is literally in the world, whether it is the spaces, textures, sounds, smells, or habits it experiences, the genetic traits we inherit, the ideologies we absorb. We have less grasp of the sense of touch than in any previous period of history, moving further and further away from corporeal experience. There are endless pleasures between the hands: the feel, the texture, the look of food, objects as rough as a balled-up fruit or tree bark. Smooth as straw, feathers, and water-polished pebbles, the light tease of a spider’s silk …… moss, the warmth of the sun, the sting of a hailstorm, a bump as the water tumbles, and the flow of the wind: whether I can touch them of my own accord or only let them caress me, they all leave a mark on my hands as important as my eyes. important marks on the hand as in the eye.
At the end of the sharing, participants shared their own experiences and thoughts about “physicality”.
● Hexi: This sharing is like an interesting travelogue of an art curator, and even more so, his working method. It is a very dense summary and sharing of field observations and records, which is very inspiring for both artists and curators. I don’t know if performance artists have so many physical observations. Curators often interpret the finished works and elaborate the concepts of the works, but we also need to enter more into the interpretation and analysis of such “informal artworks”, so that we can finally build up a framework of the theme system.
● Sun Haili: With a funny story about the fancy pants in the celestial bath, he discusses how the body adapts to the environment and discipline, revealing a great difference from its original state, and the relationship between the identity of the place and the environment.
● Jane Liting: Are the cases and behavioral patterns chosen by Song Yi comparable, and how is the type and feasibility of comparative material defined? Is it an idyllic imagination: a perspective stemming from cultural difference itself or the contradiction between savagery and civilization?
● Zeng Qunkai: How does the body have difference? The naturalness of self-existence and self-compatibility, the “classicism” and self-awareness that the body possesses in the first place. The culturally and socially constructed body (Foucault, “Discipline and Punish”) is a differentiated body that is sensual, original, and not subject to preconceived notions. All mediums are tools with the help of expression, not entirely based on it.
● Tian Meng: The lost body, homogenized modern people need to reopen the dimension of knowing the body. Can we really maintain our independence in the face of a fiercely changing society? How to find the recognizability of identity. Song Yi is not a rigorous fieldwork, and the way of research in walking and changing is very creative.
In the end, Song Yi’s summary is very powerful: “Utopia is a force that keeps reality from completely tipping over into darkness. Through these cases it can pave the way for the public to understand performance art.” The reflections on the body in this event have a lot in common with my own exploration of how to get rid of the socio-culturally constructed “body”, and certain specific concerns can help to broaden the realm of being in the vastness of non-being.
It is hoped that we can all revive our long-forgotten experiences of the body and find the most original and self-contained form of our own bodies. The body is just a body when it is not wrapped in social and cultural rules and regulations. It is just muscle and bone, a form in space, linked to other forms. We live and breathe and are nothing else but flesh and blood, but so much more than that. You are always worth more than a body. “How to stimulate the body’s self-consciousness and spirituality, to find the naturalness of the body’s natural self-consistency and its difference without preconceptions, to reopen the dimension of knowing the body, to overcome your own boundaries in communion with other beings”.
