My first hologram performance is to honour Dr. Refaat Alareer and his last poem, “If I Must Die,” which he reshared 5 days before he was killed with his brother, nephew, sister, and her three children. I hope you can follow the link in my bio and scan the barcode wherever you are around the world, you can watch this performance on your mobile in your own environment. Let’s tell his story together
VIVAAR VENEZIA is a project initiated by the curator-duo Jonas Stampe (Sweden) and Xiao Ge (China) to coincide with the 60th Venice Art Biennale – April 17 to November 24, 2024.
Grateful for the volumetric video cuption at Wimbledon college of art with incredible PHD research Terence Quinn and Chris follows , Grzesiek Sedek, Jakob Taylor Black and Cory Allen from Scatter USA for sharing his personal grief of losing families to the bombing in Gaza.
Fragmented sound from An-Ting In the sunny afternoon, Venice was suddenly struck by a thunderstorm, as if the heavens too heard the poetic songs in 50 languages. Under An-Ting’s poignant and cinematic sound wave, tears were shed. The holographic digits also dispersed and evaporated into the night sky.
Anatomy of Posidonia Live Performance, Ibiza Video by Philemon Mukarno
Action painting Spirulina chlorophyll powder and Sea water on paper 2.75×11 Meter
Hair, the wild and abstract body movement seems always connected with the subject of femininity and freedom. A source of power that also signifies vulnerability and subservience.
This hair painting illustrates a microscopic images of fertilised Posidonia seed with eggs. At 100,000 years old, Posidonia is the oldest and largest living organism in the world; It’s one of the greatest sources of oxygen in the Mediterranean, with each square metre of plant generating between 4 and 20 litres of oxygen per day. These meadows serve as a home to more than 400 plant species and 1,000 animal species. Much loved and protected by local community but ignored by commercial developers and tourists, I wish to highlight the beauty, power and endangerment of this precious and magic plant!
Performed in front of the monument: Vara Del Rey ( A Spanish war hero was born in Ibiza in 1841 and died in Cuba 1898, during the Spanish-American War). I was provoking the concept of his heroic status. Is he also a hero in the eye’s Cubans? The Chinese political criminal, Noble Peace prize winner and democracy activist Liu Xiao Bo wrote: “Scepter’s Terracotta Army. Amazed entire world. A tombs that are more majestic than the palace. Our long history. Relying on the emperor’s grave to show off glory. “
Perhaps it’s time to focus and celebrate all other species than glorifying colonialism rulers! This performance was also inspired by a local Catalan feminist funk band: Pussydonia.
A short interview about my newest performance: Echo of Posidonia thank you IB3 for capture those sensitive moments and thank you Isa Sanz Dirctor of Territori festival for the truly remarkable effort to produce and promote this new body of work. Sharing precious opening light with Sarah Misselbrook and Saul Garcia Lopez
This is the first official performance by me with my boys: Tao and Zen.
权Rights, Power and Authority. During 20mins live performance I build a 木Wood shape character by using local died plants: Giant reed and my sons carried another half of the character 又 means again and repetition. Embodies with this word: 权power, authority and rights we are running. Audio tells the history of this word and mixed with protest news recorded from around the world calling for: human rights, woman’s rights, queer’s rights and animal rights … gives the social and emotional context to our action of running.
Yesterday, China puts ChengDu, my hometown: A city of 21millions into Covid lockdown. Tonight, many are queuing in the rain for Covid testing due to China’s strict zero case policy. This huge sudden entries has crashed the city’s digital contact and trace system also many people’s hope for more realistic and humanity approach from the authority.
10 years since the make of Be the Inside of the Vase. The film will be screening at The Third Festival of Chinese Video Artists at the Cine Morelos Cinema, Cuernavaca Mexico. It as a parallel activity in their own Violet Green Festival. Feminisms in Morelos. Thanks to Curator and longtime supporter Elizabeth Ross.
Sensational title on the society page, photos with mosaic cover our eyes …
In the past 6 months, a mother of eight children locked up in an iron chain has captivated the attention of many people in and outside of China. It is beyond a tragic human trafficking case.
There are many twists and turns in the narrative. After huge public outrage authorities in China’s Xuzhou city issued 5 statements and named Chained Mother as “Xiaohuamei: “ Little Plum Blossom – a woman was sold three times from south-western Yunnan province to Feng county. But is she truly her?
Can DNA being fake? Can identify be swap?Can 1.4 billion people save one woman?Can the internet hottest topic break the censorship wall? When is the systematic structure of rape fall? Is this horrific tragedy only happens in China? Are we truly protected in so-call more civilized city? Religion, morality, tradition, custom, politics and law, why everything over powering a woman’s choice roar!
Silenced, Jailed, Disappeared…
Delete, Remove, Forget …
Opening act at The Non-fungible Body performance Festival, Linz, Austria
I arrived in Zurich on the 7th of April in a storm. There were Ukraine flags flying in the old town. I checked with my Israeli friends safety as the shooting in the downtown Tel Aviv that night killed 3 and injured few … ShangHai has entered full scale lockdown, 25 million people are experiencing the world toughest restrictions … I watched the clouds rushing cross River Limmat, I thought, how would people react to the Cut Piece in the time of the pandemic and a war in Europe?
Here are some my experience of the Cut Piece 2022:
The performance last 2 and half hours finished by museum turned down the lights as the security guards need to go home. You could say it was an open ending, waves of actions, strong opposite responding.
Dust of fabric, I don’t remember seeing such poignant fragment in the last Cut Piece.
Whisper, 5 Chinese speaking audiences said: “Thank you”, “ Sister”, “I am sorry” … to me in soft and gentle tone, It made my eyes moist almost instantly.
A little girl came at lest 3 times, she collected different pieces from every parts of my outfit, to me she was making a map, she seemed happy and enjoying the participation. Took my instruction as an offer, a gift. Her movement around my body created poetic dance like the passing cloud.
A little boy came with his mother, dressed in yellow jacket and blue hat, it reminded me Yoko Ono’s The Blue Room Event which is where the exhibition title from: This room moves at the same speed as the clouds. This room slowly evaporates every day. Stay until the room is blue…
Some audiences were challenging the concept of “Taking” Someone didn’t cut but simply changed the direction of the scissors; Two people cut their own shirt and placed the small fabric in my hand; Someone kneeled down and stared into my eyes; Someone hugged me; Someone wiped my tears away; Someone sang, Someone cried … Two young women took their own clothes off to cover me while someone strip everything off … Someone walked away with the scissors, someone brought it back … the performance continues very slowly and silently. The
stage became an opening book … echoes Yoko’s words: “Many rooms, many dreams, many countries in the same space. — The Blue Room Event ”
One point, I had two jackets and three coats on, five people sat around me, I thought if all audience came up to the stage what a grand statement that is! “world will live as one.”
Historically Yoko amended the instructions a couple of times: indicating that “members of the audience may cut each other’s clothing. The audience may cut as long as they wish.” All the gestures happened during this Cut Piece naturally. Also it seems at times people were also recreating “Touching Piece” and “ Half A Wind” to my outfit.
Four people wrote to me after the performance, asking my thoughts also sharing their experience, what a generous concept of live art, taking and adding, sharing and exchanging! The relationship between performer and participants. It rises questions about power and control.
I went back to the hotel with three piece of fabrics and a feather in my hair, a small bleeding cut and one shoe. Like my audiences, I also had souvenirs from this Cut Piece 2022.
Finally, I like to quote Kevin Concannon conclusion from his essay: Yoko Ono’s CUT PIECE: From Text to Performance and Back: Readings of Cut Piece as feminist, pacifist, anti – authoritarian, Buddhist, Christian – and even as a striptease – are all valid. The many and varied interpretations of Cut Piece by artist, performers, audiences, and critics testify to the work’s great power – a power embedded in its score. But most importantly, Cut Piece is an incredibly rich and poetic work that poses seldom – asked questions about the nature of art itself and in the process opens itself up to a multitude of readings. To assert that any of its performances or interpretations are definitive denies the work the very multivalence at its core and minimizes the qualities that make it forever vital and alive.
I choose to wear white because it’s world peace sentiment and most importantly I was imaging as the performance goes, the energy and the shift of missing piece creates abstract clouds just like the exhibition title: This room moves at the same speed as the clouds. I wanted to in-body the cloud. ☁️
My outfit was combined with newly bought items: tights, underwear and jacket and my own loved designer clothes: shirt, skirts and shoes but this time I made a decision not to wear European Union heritage brands. I didn’t want to have the concept of “cutting” related to them because of the Russian-Ukraine war and Brexit. Still I wanted to offer my best outfit also most recognisable classic brands that has their own social identity and global expansion and influence. Here are some of my thinkings:
Jacket: Ralph Lauren ( one of the oldest American luxury brand based in New York, many people would considered it as the icon of American/Western lifestyle.)
Shirt: Vivienne Westwood, UK brand ( “The mother of punk” Vivienne Westwood is also an Eco fashion campaigner, social injustice activist, consumerism ideologist. )
Skirt: Alexander McQueen, UK brand: ( This was a vintage piece designed by Lee McQueen himself, who has a vision to “create armor for women”. To wear that to cover my bottom because both myself and Lee has experienced abuse from childhood. ) for me, Lee’s proud queer identity, HIV positive status, drugs use and tragic suicide makes him one of the most complex icon of our time.
Underwear: Calvin Klein ( one of the most iconic cultural symbol of body and branding. In 2020, Calvin Klein made a statement to cut ties with any factories or mills that produce fabric or use cotton from Xinjiang by 2021 due to human rights Al campaigners say, the cotton are produced by Xinjiang’s Uighur minority forced labour. )
Tights: Wolford ( This was the only European brand I used for it’s second skin feel and intimate last protection concept )
Shoes: Manolo Blahniks: ( It’s a pair of very classic heel. Many used as symbol of modern femininity, often used as feminist statement in soap opera such as: Sex and The City.
Film screening on the March 25th, 2022 at Central Michigan University
Gifts For The River Film Festival seeks to celebrate our relationship with the land and waterways that sustain us. To celebrate the artists and filmmakers who are in intentional relationship with the natural world and utilize their medium to create awareness about the issues that threaten Mother Earth as well as celebrate the ongoing resilience of Turtle Island and the peoples who care for it.
Xie Rong and Jamie Baker ‘Sea 海’ Jeju Island, South Korea, 2019
Sea
Performance by Xie Rong Photo by Jamie Baker
I like to say, I am the daughter of the ocean, I like to say that I grew up in the sea … but that’s a lie, I can’t swim and I am terrified of water. I first saw the sea when I was 11 years old, my dad took me to Hainan, it was the only time I traveled with him, growing up with my single mum, she described him as: “The Sailor! He is drifting in the yellow river.” For many years this metaphor painted a vibrant and romantic image of my never-homed father. He used to say he won’t become my burden and he will die young, at 60 years old he will jump off a cliff and hug the ocean. My father did die at 60 years old, not by the cliff, not in the sea but in an empty flat, alone, starving, and frozen to death.
The Chinese word “Sea” constructed in three parts: water, human, and mother. It’s a word about bodies. bodies of humans, bodies of nature. Bodies of individuals and social emotions.
2019, I traveled to Sydney and South Korea, and Finland to perform about the Sea. I collected personal stories and collaborate with local musicians, Subjects spread crossed: family, loss, grief, migration, border and climate crisis.
Just like the sea itself, so close to everyone’s life, deep in everyone’s memory. Even for someone like me who doesn’t even swim.
Xie Rong appropriates contemporary of Chineseness, and tropes of Chinoiserie and femininity in order to subvert them. Utilising her own body as material, she often works with text written on her skin using red lipstick, black Chinese ink, white ‘ink’ made from jasmine tea, or her own breast milk after giving birth to her second child. She mines her own experiences of childhood, family, marriage and motherhood – and those of her female ancestors – juxtaposing English narration with Chinese traditional folk song to play with her complex hybrid identity. Her work explores the territory of translation: between two languages, between gesture and stillness, between her Chinese past and English present, between performance and image. Xie Rong studied at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute High School before moving to London, where she gained a BA in Graphic Design at Central Saint Martins and an MA in Fine Art at the Royal College of Art. Her work has been seen in the United States, United Kingdom, France, China, Sweden, Egypt, Germany, Australia and Korea, Finland, Mexico and Iran . She won 40 under 40 perspective art award in 2017 and the China Arts Now Award 2019. Since 2011, She has been collaborating with photographer Jamie Baker on photographic interventions within her performance work.
Harbinger – create a physical and digital exhibition about marginalised communities dealing with the climate crisis in line with COP26 which is on the 1st -12th November 2021.
The exhibition also showcases the stories of artists and how they and their art have been affected, as a result. These stories are married with recorded interviews with a leading dermatologist consultant explaining the effects of chemical treatments on the hair and skin, and parallel recorded interviews with soil scientists from renowned international universities showing the effects of chemical treatments on the soil, wildlife, plants, and the effect as these chemicals make their way down through the earth to the water table. This is an integral part of the exhibition and a curatorial decision to marry the emotional and scientific elements to powerfully show the impact on marginalised women’s skin and hair and the impact on the earth’s skin.
There will be photographic examples of biodiversity due to hair chemical treatments being invested within the soil. Finally, archival materials showcasing historical evidence of the creation of mass chemical treatments because of profit from white cis man-made industries.
Lawn Are an Ecological Disaster, Are you surprised?
This year I have been researcher on the history of Lawn. Reflecting on the social and environmental impacts of Lawns, family roots, man occupied space, collective memories, native species beyond human centred perspectives. How visionary plans for the city can be sustainable for generations to come.
Portrait 爱LOVE is made from layers of wild flowers and weeds from our lawn. The character written across my face reads: Love. If the lawn is a symbol of status and a sign of pride and unity in the community, I truly wish our love for a manicured lawn can be more inclusive by allowing it to grew higher and more wild.
Film: TianFu Lawn: Keep off the Grass In early 90s, my father’s business was declining. He borrowed money from his friends and family to invest in properties. A trusted the contact in the government, shared a secret business opportunity. Chengdu is redesigning its city centre on Ren Min south road, where the imperial city was demolished during the Cultural Revolution. My father can invest in one real estate and turn it into a shop front. This seems to be a golden opportunity to change his life, he dreamed excitedly the future customers spending fortune on his merchandise in the middle of this heavenly city centre. One year later, the reality was unexpected and cruel. This city centre square that many people was waiting for was 88000 square meters of lawn. Lawn does not grow well in China so for the next 24years, “Keep Off the Grass” has become a symbol for a civilised city. Together with ground-breaking urban modernisation, our motherland has transformed from mountains and water, villages and gardens to forests of irons and concretes decorated by manicured and not so evergreen turf patches.
XieRong’s wild lawn & neighbour’s manicured lawn, Surrey England
TianFu Square in1980, ChengDu China
XieRong’s father in TianFu Square, 1991, ChengDu China
Echo Morgan (Xie Rong) is a performance artist. She has always been interested in the relationship between Body, Memory and Politics through gesture, mark making and storytelling. Through video and an audience Q&A, she will share her research into some inspirational artist’s projects (including Betsy Damon, Zheng Bo and Song Chen), that address important environmental issues through the theme of water, plants and soil.
Following her intense performance of Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece (as Echo Morgan) at the Peace Is Power exhibition in Leipzig (April 2019), the amazing artist Xie Rong performed another of Ono’s works at the museum’s retrospective of Yoko’s career. Although Yoko’s Painting Until It Becomes Marble is an actual painting rather than a conceptual one, Rong performed a live interpretation of Yoko’s work. Immersing herself in paint and becoming a part of the actual work is an integral aspect of Xie Rong’s art. She applied her own method to Yoko’s static painting, and the result was stunning.
Yoko’s original work is a black and white ink drawing which is an accordion style fold-out. It was first shown during her first solo art exhibition Paintings and Drawings by Yoko Ono, at Fluxus founder George Maciunas’ AG Gallery in New York City. Painting Until It Becomes Marble came with Yoko’s instruction that visitors were to “cut their favorite parts until the whole thing is gone”. It was also shown at MoMA in 2015 as part of Yoko Ono: One Woman Show, 1960-1971.
Xie Rong’s live interpretation of Yoko’s painting was stunning. Yoko’s original painting actually has some ‘movement’ in its accordion folded shape. Rong took it to a new level, breathing new life into the piece. Reverently and ceremoniously, the artist stood quietly in the huge empty space with extremely high floor-to-ceiling windows emitting a background of pure light. Dressed all in white, Xie Rong stood with two bowls at her feet, one filled with Chinese black ink and the other with pure blue pigment powder. The artist combed the ink through her long black hair, saturating it and began to paint on a very large canvas on the floor.
Rong’s barefooted dance began – at first light and graceful like a ballerina, then more intensely, furiously jumping as her drenched hair splattered paint in all directions and on herself. ‘Jack the Dripper’ (Jackson Pollack) has fierce competition! The chaotic calligraphy continued with her head to the floor, making brush strokes. Kneeling with her head down on the canvas, submitting to the work in reverence, she made thicker strokes and swirls. Covered in ink, her white clothing and skin took on the characteristics of the actual artwork.
Xie Rong:
“An amazing aspect of the performance was the sound! This heavenly space is where they displayed Yoko’s cricket cages. I sang this song and told the story about losing my mother in law two weeks ago. And I invited audiences to rise the painting with me! But the paper dropped and become a cloud!”
at Yoko Ono: Peace Is Power exhibition @mdbkleipzig in Leipzig Germany
May 11, 2019.
Watch the performance videos:
Story of the Stone
This work by Xie Rong is inspired by three of Yoko Ono’s works; Three Mounds, Riverbed and Rising (lyrics).
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Xie Rong: “I wish to create a piece to bring illumination and sound into the darkness. To connect all the rooms into the main hall, create movement of audiences. From 9:30 Andreas played music create tension and atmosphere. 10pm, Me, in a mirror suit, walking into the main hall. I stood inside a rope light, silent, I will sing “Olive Tree” then I walk off to collect all the ropes, I shout out to each floor and balcony, drag ropes between people. Creating spider web collection between the three museum floors and four exhibition rooms.” … …
I had a wonderful chat with artist Echo Morgan about her performance. Yoko requested that Cut Piece be performed at the opening of her Peace Is Power exhibition in Leipzig. Over time this masterpiece – performed many times by Yoko and by other artists – has become legendary. Echo Morgan was approached by the museum to be the performer, as they were interested in bringing her own art to the museum at a later date.
Photo: Alexander Schmidt
MdbK Leipzig, Yoko Ono “PEACE is POWER”, Eröffnung, Performance “Cut Piece”, Echo Morgan
Echo’s statement:
“I made a promise to myself not to participate in other artist’s work; not to react someone else’s performance…When Alfred Weidinger, the director of the Museum of Fine arts Leipzig approached me with the idea of performing Yokos Cut Piece. I fall into deep thoughts.
Cut Piece was first performed by Yoko Ono on July 20, 1964 at Yamaichi Hall, Kyoto, Japan. The artist entered the stage in her best dress, sat in a traditional sitting position, and invited the audience to cut pieces of her clothing with scissors and take the piece with them.
I met Yoko in 2009 at a design boutique in Notting-hill gate, Feathers, where I have worked throughout my study years in London. I helped her chose few outfits: jackets and shirts and 5 hats. While packing the clothes, I said to her: My husband gave me a piece of broken vase in 2003, he said it was from your live performance in Tate Modern and you invited the audiences to put the vase back together in 2013, we got married in 2004 and we have been cherish that piece of vase and really look forward to rebuilding it with her. Yoko smiled and asked me for pen and paper. She wrote down: Dear Luke and Echo, I give you a sun. Love, Yoko Ono. She even drew a smiley sun.
2011, I separated with Luke, went to the Royal College of Art and became a performance artist. Same year, I did a performance: I Buried My Loss, together with many sentimental letters and photos I left the note from Yoko and her piece of vase behind. The only thing I kept was his surname: Morgan.
As a pioneer in conceptual and performance art, Yoko’s work has moved and influenced many people. Including myself! I do feel deeply honoured to be approached to perform her Cut Piece at the opening of YOKO ONO PEACE IS POWER at MdbKLepizig. So, for one time only I will break my own promise, this is my tribute and love for Yoko’s art and life I do believe it is a fate that I have to take this offer. There for, I would like to take this opportunity and mark this performance as my last performance under the name Echo Morgan.
There was some controversy over having an established young artist in her own rite (who happened to be Asian) perform the piece, as some thought that her resemblance to Yoko would make her seem like an imitator. However, after the curators met with Echo (a Chinese artist based in London) they realized her deep understanding and determination to do this work, and agreed that she was perfect for the piece.
Cut Piece (Yoko Ono, Grapefruit 1964)
Performer sits on stage with a pair of scissors placed in front of her and asks the audience to come up on the stage, one by one, and cut a portion of her clothing (anywhere they like) and take it. The performer, however, does not have to be a woman.
Echo told me that her experience was surreal. She was haunted by the large size of the room (1,000 seats which were all filled, as was the standing room) and a live stream to 9,000 visitors in the gallery.
The circumstances (beyond Echo’s control) were more like a grand theatrical staging. Echo did not realize that the museum had the event programmed as a 90-minute performance, as the director and the mayor were to give speeches at the end. She was now on a schedule that she could not control and was worried when some aggressive participants cut large chunks of her clothing early on, speeding the piece along too quickly.
Echo ceremoniously approached the stage, sitting side-legged in the same way that Yoko had done, remaining motionless. She made the announcement, “Take the scissors. Cut a small piece of my clothes, One at a time. Take it with you. It is a gift.” She added, “My body is the scar of my mind.” paraphrasing Yoko’s song “O’Wind” from the album Fly (1971).
Although this stipulation was not in the original instruction, Yoko had always worn her best clothing for each performance – usually sacrificing a black dress from the London shop Biba. Echo wore formal designer attire; a white Dolce & Gabbana shirt, a black Prada skirt, a black Armani jacket and Chanel shoes.
Echo told me that she added the detail of black tights and high heels as a feminist statement (Charlotte Moorman had worn a ball gown during her several performances of Cut Piece). The artist’s shoes were removed by two participants, each of whom took one shoe and promised to bring them back again in 100 years (a reference to Yoko’s Promise Piece, which had originally inspired Echo’s performance).
Echo was completely absorbed in the moment, enjoying the sound of the cutting and of people’s footsteps echoing from the floorboards in the large hall. She was startled when man cut her bra and waved it around triumphantly, provoking opposing reactions – cheers and gasps of anger – from the large crowd viewing the live stream. But she knew that she was relatively safe amongst so many viewers. Other cutters were more hesitant, and most were less aggressive than she expected.
The cutters were also greatly affected. Most women were stunned by the performance and participated in a motherly, protective manner. When Echo’s bra was removed, two women wrapped the artist’s naked torso in two scarves – swaddling her like a baby. The director signaled that this would be a beautiful note on which to end the performance, but Echo decided to remove the scarf and continue. When all of the artist’s clothing was finally cut away, a woman made a grand gesture by cutting off a large piece of her own skirt, placing it across Echo’s lap, clasping her hands and bowing down to the artist as though she were a deity (the essence of Yoko’s intent of Cut Piece – the selflessness of Buddha*).
A most touching detail devised by Echo was at the end of the performance. When completely naked, she picked up the scissors and cut a piece of her own hair and left it on the stage before standing up and walking away. “It is a gesture of returning her a promise that I lost.”The intent was “To leave a part of me, after nothing was left of me, – my DNA – for her in return for that piece of vase that I had lost.” (Promise Piece). The artist asked Yoko’s long-time curator Jon Hendricks for permission to do this, which he gave wholeheartedly, knowing that Yoko would appreciate this addition. But of course, this ‘edit’ provoked a big reaction amongst the German art crowd. However, it was a poignant gesture that Yoko would certainly love – with its subtle reference to Hair Peace (1969).
Concerned museum patrons approached Echo the following day, asking if she was OK. This was her final performance as Echo Morgan. She will use her name Xie Rong from this point forward.
Since my father passed away two years ago I found impossible to make live art, he was the drive, the inspirations for my action art. My straggled soul found huge peace, hope and happiness in daily life of caring my boys. But I have missed so much of the honesty, vulnerability and power of being the ART and communicate to the world through ACTION. Thank you Jonas Stampe for inviting me to the 11th of Live Action in Gothenburg. I am honored to join with some amazing live artists to explore, experience and express the magic of live art. #Gothenburg#lindamarymontano#performanceart#johncourt#huangrui#echomorgan#carlosmartiel#annerochat#行为艺术#哥德堡
3 Hours Lipsticks, sete traditional water jousting shield and jousting pole, white French girl’s outfit @Sete, Infr’action,14.09.2013 My uncle used to call me the Don Quixote. I was excited to discover the famous sport in Sete: Water Jousting and noticed it’s a game for boys only. I covered my body with red lipsticks to create an image of a very feminine modern water jousting warrior. During the three hours performance I began unexpectedly crying.
15 min presentation for my final exam at Royal College of Art
I borrowed the gesture and name of Changing face?? which is an ancient Chinese dramatic art that is part of the Sichuan opera. Performers wear vividly coloured masks, typically depicting well known characters from the opera, which they change from one face to another almost instantaneously with the swipe of a fan, a movement of the head, or wave of the hand.
However, My changing face is a slower act, through the mediums of live spoken words, film projection and showing photographies from previous performances. I invite you to share my performative journey of last two year.
All the fragments act as a mechanical reproduction circle based on my Buddism philosophy of Samsara.
Multimedia Installation
Scaffolding, open frame industrial monitors, films
2meter x 2meter
Royal College of Art Show RCA2013
A Pai Fang ?? is a traditional style of Chinese arch,
a historically popular monument that celebrates important family members and achievements. The most famous are “Virgin Pai Fangs” which memorialise the chastity of wives who never remarried after the death of their husbands.
Family Tree stands a new kind of Pai Fang, a multimedia monumental arch constructed by skeletal scaffolding poles. Eight open-frame industrial monitors hang on the structure on multiple planes, showing films, some sound tracked, some not, whose 3D construction offers the viewer multi-layered experiences of family in imagery, interviews and my own reminiscences. A new memorial.
The Royal Standard in collaboration with Drawing Paper and Liverpool Biennial present a one-day experimental event exploring the relationship between sound, performance and drawing. It will screening my films:
Performance by Echo Morgan
Photography by Jamie Baker
The performance ‘Be the Inside of the Vase’ was divided into two parts.
The first story began with my father’s attempt to commit suicide. The performance revealed my uneasy childhood and difficult relationship with my father. I was still and silent whilst my voice revealed the narrative using a pre-recorded audiotape. In the second performance the story moved towards my relationship with my mother. Through my rather brutal personal history I addressed sexually political statements such as: from my father: “Women should be like vase, smooth, decorative and empty inside! ” From my mother: “ Don’t be a vase, pretty but empty inside, be the inside, be the quality!” From myself: “This is my voice, my story, my childhood, I am not a vase! .”
My birth name is Xie Rong. A family name from my granny Xie and a given name from my mum; both of whom eventually divorced. I felt, I carried two single mothers on my shoulders. I am Rong ‘?’ the confederate rose, I grew up in tears. In 2000 I began to use the name ‘Echo’ to write articles for newspapers.
Echo Morgan was born in London in 2004. I gave birth to myself, I created this cute, stylish image for me to completely escape from Xie Rong’s life. Life without political suppression and family boundaries, it became light and pretty. But the name “Echo Morgan” was from my marriage which ended in 2011, I am revisiting my roots as Xie Rong.
thank you 
