The performance and video installation “I once had a duck soup cooked with ginger and wine, and lapsed into a comatose suspense” recalibrates hauntology by performatively evoking the material entrails of ghosts. Five performers embody pictographic Chinese characters with “ghost” radicals. Their queuing at Meng Po’s counter is choreographed according to the artist's etymological reading of the characters. The work asks: If ghosts are bound to their material counterparts, who are the subjects of the realm of yin, i.e., the realm of the (un)dead?

The bowls are two of the three props made for the performance “I once had a duck soup cooked with ginger and wine, and lapsed into a comatose suspense." The circular structure of the performance score instructs the performers to pass the leaking bowls around and refill them.

Meng Po's Bowl #1 & #3

2022

cotton, linen, threads, stains of soup , size variable