WeiZen Ho
t h e
s u b t l e b e i n g s
at
Articulate project space, 497 Parramatta Road, Leichhardt, 15 – 25 March 2018
This piece is written in three parts;
the first after some research in anticipation of meeting WeiZen, the second
after we had met; while she was in the process of making the installation for
her performance and the third after seeing her perform.
Part 1: Anticipation
She
walks not
Even
before meeting this inter-disciplinary performing artist I have been captivated
by an image of her in mid-performance. Filling the frame of the shot, a Chinese
woman lies belly-down on a wheeled platform, appearing to propel herself along
the floor by the sweeping, claw-like actions of her bare and muscular arms. Her
legs drag behind her. On her face is an expression of such strength and
intrigue I have read it over and over many times, trying to find a meaning. I
can’t. It could be anything from admonishment to pain to possession to otherworldly
knowingness, maybe even a species of mirth, but it is certainly fuelled by
sheer grit and endurance. If eyes alone could speak … but no, in performance
art it is the entire body that narrates, and in this image WeiZen Ho walks not,
but drags herself. Then again, while legs and feet may not power her, she has
wheels, and she rolls smoothly and efficiently, paradoxically (but so effectively)
speaking with a look, from a
traditionally disempowered space, or actual ‘platform’; lying low and horizontally.
This
is the power of performance art, and specifically for Ho’s practice, the use of
the visceral body and its movement and location in space (or site) as material. In much the same way as a
visual artist would use material such as charcoal or paint, here it is the body
and its abstract movements in space that relate her particular interest in
exploring socio-cultural histories, translated and expressed through her body, as
performance. The histories-as-performances are drawn from her own lineage, and
beyond, accessing a variety of cultural practices across East Asia; some localised,
some carried along by diaspora and others an intermingling somewhere between
the two (as is typical of much of this part of sea-connected Asia). WeiZen has
spun her performances from the influence of local folklore and mythology
frequently interwoven with migration, colonial, feminist and local features. Her
solo performance series Stories from the
Body (#1-4) 2014 – 16 and performed in Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan and here
in Australia presented such powerfully fraught and fractured encounters. In each
piece the concept of mediumship was central to her conception, and ultimately,
performance.
WeiZen’s
current collaborative arts project, t h e s u b t l e b e i n g s continues
this interest in the performative body as medium. It specifically references
her encounters with rituals of possession, shamanism and animism encountered
directly in her research and travels over a two-year period to Sabah, Malaysia and
Hanoi, Vietnam. The project’s culmination was the installation at Articulate project
space, ultimately realised in a series of performances in March 2018.
 |
WeiZen
Ho, Stories from the Body #5 (PLATFORM 2017) at
Articulate project space
Photographer:
Vsevolod Vlaskine (15 July 2017)
|
Part 2: installation
She
articulates
I
meet WeiZen, finally on a Friday. WeiZen and I it turns out, come from the same
part of South East Asia and also share a similar cultural history in that we
are descendants of Chinese people who fled into what was then British Malaya in
the wake of political conflicts. There is a frisson as I discover that WeiZen
has visited my hometown Kota Kinabalu, as part of her research trip to Malaysia
as well as Hanoi in Vietnam. She
has been driven by an interest in researching and witnessing the rituals around
trance and possession, rituals that are also a shadowy part of her own
socio-cultural history, shaped by time, place and perspective. While in Sabah,
she spent time with the indigenous Orang Rungus people from Kampung Minyak, and
it is their own whispered description of the origin of their characteristic dance
movements that provided the genesis for the title, t h e s u b t l e b e i n g s.[1]
WeiZen whispers the actual words the Rungus used, pre-translation, orang halus itu and I am grateful to
hear it, for the blanketing sensation of a familiar language, spoken with its
rolling r’s, guttural ngs, s liaison and also for the
evocation of a distant mirage in which barely discernible figures, the subtle beings move with delicacy and
deliberation among a thick jungle.
t
h e s u b t l e b e i n g s - all lower case, with spaces between the letters. The
concept, so eloquently expressed in text, suggests a physical conflation of
democratic markers and open spaces. We all have bodies in which we collect
lived experiences, yet it is the pauses between actions, the spaces between the
trees, the silence among noise, the absences where we are open, and where
something may happen. Perhaps a space created for performance, as medium, or as
vehicle for possession. In her reflective essay Potus Sedere, WeiZen elaborates on the nature of space as absence,
a generative and fertile place for her to work from.
there
is the notion of possession as the filling in of, and meditating on, many kinds
of absences. It makes me wonder about the kinds of qualitative states that may
make possession possible: mental vulnerability, uncertainty of social identity,
lack of access to deeper communion or devotional spaces, … the thinning veil
between life and death, the need for empowerment, unbelonging, dislocation,
displacement and uprooting.[2]
As
a performing artist, her interest is in the point where the performance of
ritual-like experiences of being possessed becomes a transformative experience
for both the performer and the onlooker. Her intent is to reach beyond the
passive performative model and arrive at an active performance, in which the audience
is engaged with her actions. An essential aspect of her practice is the
continual refinement of a minimally conceived performance methodology; enabling
a large part of each performance to be open to improvisation, experimentation
and a collaboration of sorts. In person, WeiZen is animated, eloquent and
expansive. As we talk she shows me a gesture of her arm, see how much more interesting this movement is (an awkward twisting
gesticulation), compared with this (this
time, a graceful, balletic flourish). In this I imagine her performance to
come, likely to challenge my role as viewer, for her preference for the awkward
over ease, in bodily expression as well as conceptual intent.
The
first phase of the presentation of the t h e s u b t l e b e i n g s at
Articulate project space, was an installation in progress. Built gradually over
the weeks, it was at once a nest, a building site in transition and a suspenseful
stage for the performance to come. The work utilised distinct imagery and
material as a response to the research areas. In response to WeiZen’s
encounters with the bobohizans of
Sabah were hair sculptures, both human and synthetic, loosely spiralled on the walls,
suspended in clumps and occasionally entangled with vegetation.[3]
These abject vestiges of the body evoked a strange simultaneity of repulsion
and attraction. A costume resembling an enlarged slice of skin, with horsehair
filaments sprouting outwards is displayed nearby. Elsewhere, and among these
bodily items were reflective surfaces and motifs – these were WeiZen’s responses
to the witnessing of Len Dong rituals in Hanoi and they were installed to
invite participatory actions from the audience.[4]
The reflective surfaces act to mirror viewers in the performance along with the
artist. In addition to the hair and reflective elements, the proposed
performances were to also utilise text, sound, sound circuitry, movement,
vocals and video.
So
the next phase of the project was to move into the series of performances. She
walks not but articulates as performance, those s u b t l e b e I n g s, as WeiZen
herself says, coming from a basic premise that “all of human living is
performed”.[5]
WeiZen Ho, t h e s u b t l e b
e I n g s (installation detail) at
Articulate project space
Photographer: Vsevolod Vlaskine (March
2018)
WeiZen Ho, t h e s u b t l e b
e I n g s (installation
participation) at Articulate project space
Photographer: Vsevolod Vlaskine (March
2018)
Part 3: Performance
She
shakes, she speaks, she transcends
I saw the last and final of four performances, held on a
Saturday night. The performances had been conceived in relation to the space,
which was in turn carefully prepared by the artist and her collaborators as a series
of installations and video projections. We were directed to move through the
space via three distinct performance pieces, or cumulative phases, all of which
evoked aspects of possession and mediumship, cloaked in ritual.
WeiZen Ho, t h e s u b t l e b
e I n g s (installation detail) at
Articulate project space
Photographer: Vsevolod Vlaskine (March
2018)
At the point of entry ritual helpers received us. These women
explained practical details of the performance it had the effect of of clarity
and welcome. The gesture was one of kindness. The first performance took place
at the far end of the downstairs space, reached by traversing past a video
taken in Sabah – and the characteristic percussive gong sounds followed our
progress, past the hair
installation, which had grown in number, thickness and metaphoric potential.
There, by the shrine and a kneeling ritual assistant, we waited, until the
heavy anticipation broke and she appeared. Her body, slight and naked, evoked
empathy. She was helped into – or onto – the skin-piece – a prosthesis glued
directly on to her body. Her long hair was unbound and loosened. Somehow, the fragile
projecting filaments of hair from the front of the costume echoed this
unfettering gesture and guided her first, tentative actions. Her movements were
small, light, subtle as air currents, which she sniffed audibly, her head
nodding, swaying, absorbed and apparently oblivious to the audience. Conversely,
her arms and hands, held behind the body, wrist to reversed wrist, started to tremble
violently, suggest binding or physical resistance. Some, though not all, of her
movements stood out to me, hinting at indigenous dance movements local to
Borneo. Among a pile of dried leaves on the floor, her toes curled and crawled.
There was a walk – of tiny shuffling steps – in which the inner and outer soles
of the feet were used and a singular moment when her bare heel extended and
knocked on the floor. These were disparate, truncated, remnant actions, broken parts
of a language of the body offered up haltingly, not spoken fluently or with
grace. This performance closed abruptly when the ritual assistant, who had been
holding her, loudly slapped her on the back, propelling her forward and
stumblingly into space.
WeiZen Ho, t h e s u b t l e b
e I n g s (performance) at
Articulate project space
Photographer: Vsevolod Vlaskine (March
2018)
For the second phase of the performance, we were ushered
upstairs, with script in hand, to gather among a minimal architectural
assemblage. Suspended from above, sheets of reflective film were positioned
around simple timber benches, and a line of red cloaks (another aspect of
audience participation). In a change of costume, she wore a shimmering
double-layered skirt which she pulled up over her head, transforming herself
into bodily geometry; an inverted double triangle. In doing this she turned
herself into a symbol: becoming a moving, vocalising figure of speech. She uttered loudly and occasionally through the
fabric, materially present, but with muffled voice and face masked. This is where language was first uttered, and to hear spoken English was a little
unsettling, though the words and phrases were not coherent communication but more
of a verbal flourishing. In our earlier discussion, WeiZen had described it as
an unreadable text. Traditions of
absurdist theatre were evoked and the audience was invited to take part, in groups
of three parts;
expels A foretelling
bared witH ebonian
slumbeR crowing
insipidnesS …
and so we intoned in a group incantation, over, through and
among other spoken threads. This known or more familiar format of performance
was cut with the unknown; she also voiced gutturally, in deep reverberations
followed by upward arcs into melancholic strains that suggested the plaintive
strains of Chinese opera. Once I thought I heard the circling rise of the
Imam’s call to prayer before it dissolved into something else. Aside from the
vocal elements, she moved among us, using eye contact and issuing pronouncements
– prophetically delivered. Like her bodily
movements in the first part of the performance, this was not fluent masterful
language but chopped and dislocated parts of utterance. She was with us, but
not really, the effect was of a lighthouse beam turning, illuminating something
and then moving on. Her movements here, upstairs and with sound were a contrast
as they were confident and assured. Without hesitation she climbed a bench,
hugged a corner, strode out and spoke up.
WeiZen Ho, t h e s u b t l e b
e I n g s (performance) at
Articulate project space
Photographer: Vsevolod Vlaskine (March
2018)
WeiZen Ho, t h e s u b t l e b
e I n g s (performance) at
Articulate project space
Photographer:
Vsevolod Vlaskine (March 2018)
Having moved from a bodily to a vocal emphasis we were
readied for the final performance. During a break, ritual assistants handed out
glasses of subtly scented water. So it was with the taste of cucumber-infusion
in our mouths, that the final and most dynamic phase of the performance began. She
descended downstairs and we, her audience watched, mostly from above, looking
down. This juxtaposition suggested disempowerment, an inversion of the raised
stage or at the very least dislocation, and cast her in a somewhat abject
position relative to her audience. This was amplified as she removed her shirt,
crawled on to a reflective rectangle and flipped her hair forward so that a
video projection was cast directly on to her naked back. At once she became a
fleshy part of the black and white scene. With her hands she took her hair and
began to use it. She filled her mouth with hair – a silencing act. She then
began to wipe her hair over the flickering images on the floor, appearing to
clean, erase or perhaps polish the surface/screen in slow and deliberate actions.
With this action, she created a layered temporal ritual in which she occupied,
in the one moment. different stratas of time; the past time of the film and the
present time of the performance collapsed into one. Connecting these layered
temporalities were a lineage of women; the woman on the floor, the women in the
projection, indeed all the women who have gone before in performing these
traditionally feminised actions, of cleaning, grooming and sewing. In one particularly
poignant moment, she produced a large needle and started to sew her hair.
Simultaneously, the video image showed another woman tossing her hair. Social,
feminine and personal rituals collided. This compression provided a powerful
visual narration of mediumship as a type of lineage. Notably, the use of and
reference to hair connected us back to the beginning, to the clumped, severed
and disembodied hair display forming
the hair installation.
WeiZen Ho, t h e s u b t l e b
e I n g s (performance) at
Articulate project space
Photographer: Vsevolod Vlaskine (March
2018)
WeiZen Ho, t h e s u b t l e b
e I n g s (performance) at
Articulate project space
Photographer: Vsevolod Vlaskine (March
2018)
In a forum subsequent to the performance, one of the ritual
helper performers, Damian Oliver offered an insight into interpreting the three
performances and the three personas.[6]
He thought of them as a movement from the pre-personal, to the personal and
then to the trans-personal. So in this work WeiZen Ho moves perhaps from performative
representations of being. Initially, of existence without identity – mere
stirrings of consciousness. Then, the use of language (loaded with all its own
heavy histories) – a socially communicative being. Finally, she enacts a
multi-tiered plurality of being - transcendence. This interpretation lends a progressive
analysis, in that the performances are enacted as a series of ritual
transformations (via possession or mediumship) that are layered and cumulative
in effect.
So now I have traversed the many faces of her, this WeiZen
Ho, from interpreting that initial image, to meeting, talking and walking with
her, to witnessing her perform as three hers. Like the enigma generated
by that first fixed gaze, her performance work, like most good and interesting
art, defies a singular explanation but instead opens up an expanse for
interpretation, originating as it does from a similarly expansive field, a
hybridization of personal history, place-specific research and socio-cultural
ritual.
I want, saya mahu, to go, pergi ke, there, sana …
Lisa
Sharp
April
2018
All images courtesy of
the artist WeiZen Ho and the photographer Vsevelod Vlaskine.
[1] WeiZen
Ho, ‘Imageries in response to Sabah, East Malaysia’ post on www.weizenho.com http://www.weizenho.com/performance-installationinprogress/ posted June
27, 2017
[2] WeiZen
Ho, ‘Potus Sedere’ in Part of the Stories from the
Body Performance Series; Rabbit 20 – Dance, A Journal for Non-fiction Poetry, RMIT,
2017, pp. 86 - 97 at 90.
[3]
A Bobohizan is term for high priestess, a ritual specialist and
a spirit medium in Kadazan-Dusun pagan rites: Wikipedia.
[4]
Lên đồng is a ritual practiced in
Vietnamese folk religion and the mother goddess religion Đạo Mẫu, in which
followers become spirit mediums for various deities: Wikipedia.