was performed on the 5th June 2009 13.00 - Ex-Convento di Santo Stefano/ Agenzia delle Entrate San Marco 3538 Campo S. Angelo, the collateral events of 53. Venice Biennial
This is a research project about different aspects on viewing things when the “general consciousness” of viewers coming from various cultural backgrounds and educations is called to react. The subject matter is neutral to the artist, while viewers may erceive positive or negative reactions to whatever they are viewing.
As a site specific performance, the artist chooses a motif to develop into a performance and between abstract and real exist elements which as a motif could construct misunderstanding among the audience.
Some samples of factual differentiation..
-.Similar words with different pronunciations have different meaning and interpretation in different cultures. For example: “Wo
ai wai wai” is pronounced in English in a different way as in Chinese.
-.interpretation of a word’s meaning with only pronunciation. Example: “aɪ” and “ai” means love (both verbal and as noun) in
Chinese, when in any other language it would have a different meaning (if any at all). “Wai” for instance means
askew or slanting or crooked..
-.different definition between different educations. Example: the word “China”.
-.different generation in the same system of government or polity. Example: in this song the lyric changed after 2 generations
because the older meaning did not suite the actual situation. .
-.different knowledge base. Example: if you have read this text now or not.
These are the lyrics of the melody which is used in the performance:
I love Chinese (translated from Chinese to English by Google Language Tools ©)
I love Chinese, I love Chinese
Bo long cultural objects to large
Founding years
A total of five races
Sons and daughters of China's greatest
For national, For the country
Never be afraid of sacrifice
We have to respect self-installed (*we want to eradicate bandits)
Rejuvenation of the Chinese we have to (*revival of the Republic of China) (*) = old version of the lyric
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this is an one-by-one performance.
before I perform, I asked the audience, if they want to read the text (see above) before, after the performance, or never.
then I whisper the melody "I love Chinese" but replace the lyrics to "wo ai wai wai", to the audience.
photos: Anja Pollnow
