( ) is ominous of ( ), 2022, 4k video, sound, 6’39’’
|camera & cast: Dakota Guo and Miyoung Chang
“A symbol is the feet of a duck that remind you of duckness.
An omen is a clear water that submerges the feet of a duck, and there, it suspends.”
I take (false) etymology as a morgue for corpses that have fallen off signification, but I sigh for the portended that has been prescribed ahead of future references.
The omen appears as two fingers painted red, resembling the submerged feet of ducks, the liminal species that is likely to be the material for Meng Po’s famous soup, the soup for the erasure of memory as a preparation for reincarnation in Chinese folk religion. (Disclaimer: The proof I have for the recipe of Meng Po Soup is only that “I once had a duck soup cooked with ginger and wine, and lapsed into a comatose suspense”.)
The project started off as a fiction that deviates from the formulation of reincarnation. If ghosts are bound to their material counterparts, who are the subjects of the realm of yin? The pictographic Chinese characters with “ghost” radicals serve as surrogates for corpse-not-in-its-place.
( ) is ominous of ( ), performance and video installation, as part of “tuttə (le) rottə - all (the) ways: unfixed”, Centrale Fies, Dro, 10 July,
2022
| performers: Dakota Guo, Christina Emmel, Miel Ferráez, Miyoung Chang, and Iga Świeściak
| performers: Dakota Guo, Christina Emmel, Miel Ferráez, Miyoung Chang, and Iga Świeściak
Meng Po’s Bowls, 2022, cotton, linen, threads, stains of soup made of star
anise, sichuan pepper, red bean paste, size variable
Customers Leave Their Names At Her Counter, 2022, carbon paper, joss paper, fabric, thread, needle, clay, dimensions variable
