Beijing, May 7 – 19, 2007 at beilab: http://www.theatreinmotion.org/beilab/WhisperPhotos
Having successfully presented their instant radio play Chinese Whispers last year in Vienna, Daniel Aschwanden & Peter Stamer have come to Beilab to explore a Chinese version of their show. The artists-in-residence have invited 30 Beijing residents for collaboration to exchange and share personal narratives within preset game structures and performative rules. Individual utterances are collected, altered, and woven into a discursive fabric to generate overall docu fiction about contemporary Beijing.
On Friday, May 18 at 20.00h, the group presents some of their work-abouts during the week, to be followed by an open discussion. Drinks are provided.
Residence supported by Austrian Cultural Form (acf)
Background
In May 2006, Daniel Aschwanden/Bilderwerfer and Peter Stamer have been invited by theatre in motion and DIAF 06 to realise their Beijing project Head Room which for 4 weeks fathomed the borderline between private and public space. Besides a series of discussions, they have also visited 7 Beijing residents with different social backgrounds (from migrant workers to managing directors) and reconstructed their favourite living space to become a so called home box, being portable on the shoulders of two interlocutors. Each Beijing host then has invited a guest to lead a private conversation in this Head Room, somewhere in Beijing.
7 boxes, documentary videos, sound recordings, stories have formed the starting point of artistic installation and performance of Chinese Whispers in Vienna. The boxes have been assembled to become one fictitious Beijing living space, in which the bearly audible whispers of private conversations resonate. On one exterior side of each box there was one of seven documentation projected, on which the urban interventions of the Beijing hosts could be seen: the artist Shu Yang on a bus Stopp in Chaoyang, the attorney Pang Benzhen in the postmodern bussines district Soho, the journalist Gwynn Guilford by the municipal Houhai Lake, the worker Wang Feng at the market place of Dashanzi district, the professor CS Kiang on the Beida-Campus of the Beijing University, the manager Chen Xing Yu near to the shopping mall in the south of Beijing, the accountant Zhang Han in Nanluoguxiang Hutong, Dongcheng.
An imaginary space for the ‚other’ opens up in this environment, whereas the black box of the stage transforms itself into a public waiting place for cultural difference. Chinese Whispers deals with misunderstanding in communicating with another. Who’s talking here in Chinese?
On stage, Daniel Aschwanden and Peter Stamer installed a sound studio, creating and
performing a radio play. Together with sound-designer Oliver Stotz, they created sound
images, editing them live out of sound footage and improvisations being created on the spot.
Their stories and narratives are nurtured both by personal experience, the artists have
gathered in their previous China projects, and by facts about China from newspapers, records,
or archives.
By this, a playground is being opened for stories of the every daily and cultural narratives from China. The counterpart on the other side of the sound table is addressed with a story that is being invented, improvised in the very moment of being told. The other is approched by a simple performative formula: „you are...“ that puts him into a fictitious place somewhere in China. His rule is to respond to the first invention by changing the addressee, clinging to the story that was laid out on the table, and to yarn the story from another perspective until the narration is taken over again. The improvisation of text and sound yet makes just temporary, alterable statements about a country that is in constant change: Chinese Whispers, a rhapsody of three tale-tellers.
The suggestive power of radio play depriving the narration and construction of the pictorial
implements acoustic concentration and imagination. Accordingly, images arise in the head
room of the observer which are neglected by theatrical representation. The performance of
the radio play relocates the relation of the ‚visible’ to the ‚imagined’ in favor of the faculty of
visual imagination, thus making bodies appear, which don’t sit as such at the (radio) table.
The Viennese play performs a view on China, which the audience, as a matter of fact, merely gets to know by hearsay.
Bio
Daniel Aschwanden, born 1959 in Switzerland, Vienna-based, DE-SPECIALIZING in the context of dance, performance, old & new media, art, social & urban environments. founder of TANZSPRACHE dance&performancefestival, BILDERWERFER - performancelabel since 90ies, Recent works: BLOODY DROPS OF HAPPINESS / ALWAYS AFTER THE BLONDES / FRAME!FREEZE!FRAME! / CHINESE WHISPERS – HEAD ROOM (together with Peter Stamer)
NOW: Initiator & CO-founder of PATHOSÜRO
Peter Stamer, born 1970 in South-West Germany, free-lance dramaturg, author, curator, and performer. His projects explore discursive power within performative setups. Develops series of talk performances like AT HOME (Vienna 2005), SANS PAPIERS (Berlin 2006), HEAD ROOM – CHINESE WHISPERS (Beijing/Vienna 2006, with Daniel Aschwanden), PERSONALE (Vienna 2006/2007). Recently festival dramaturg for Young Choreographers’ Project (Caochangdi work station Beijing 2007). Curator for and artist-in-residene at APT (Antwerp 2008).