With the wind (2023) | Vivian Wong Performance Art Documentation

With the wind (2023)

The performance attempts to recall the freedom from my childhood memories, and reanact it in a place afar by bring the sense of wind into a static indoor hall. Freedom is to create, to bring the non-existences come to life.

Video by BBB Johannes Deimling
at Galerie KUB & PAS 82
//
The performance is created based on a photo of childhood memories. The photo is of my family and me horse riding in Mongolia Prairie. It is the moment I have a strong sense of freedom in my earlier years, where the wind is coming to me as I'm moving quickly forward. This sense of freedom becomes rare to me as I grow up, which may be because of Hong Kong's social reality and the physical condition of me not being able to be exposed to the sun as a chronic patient.

The performance is created based on a memory of happiness and freedom. I relate the sense of freedom to a flying scarf, which also reminds me of what I see at the endpoint of the horse riding journey. "With the wind" recreated the scene in my memory: the sense of freedom is a metaphor for a floating scarf in the air, and the atmosphere of the prairie is marked with the song "鴻雁", the sound of the wind chime, and the flowers. From the singing, the sound of flowers moving, the blowing sounds, the visual of the scarf flying, the movement of the scarf, the route of running, the joy of running around audiences, to the sound of the wind chime, the imagination of what would be felt outside the window, all the materials serve as a device for air movement to be seen and heard.By creating the wind through my movement to let the scarf fly, the action tries to bring back the wide-awake freedoms and joy in the memory. Throughout the performance, the form and sense of wind were transformed and converted.

The first verse of the Mongolia song 鴻雁 is sung throughout the performance:

鴻雁 天空上
對對排成行
江水長 秋草黃
草原上琴聲憂傷
(Geese in the sky
Pairs are lined up
The river is long, the grass is yellow in autumn
The melancholy sound of the lute on the grassland)

The continued singing of 鴻雁 plays a key part in the performance apart from the flying scarf. The song not only credits the conceptual background from Mongolia but also contributes to the performance as a sound device. The physical states of performance artists are more relatable to the audience as the latter could hear the change of breathing, the changes of tempo, the changes of tone, and emotions that are influenced by the artist's movement.

The audience reflects that they see poems, light, and joy inside the performance, which suggests the performance has brought the audience into the scenario of intangible lightness and wind in an indoor hall. This artist's "imaginative space" in her memory, hence has been projected into the performance space through sounds and actions.