Human (Installation/Performance)

Artist: Xiao Lu

Performance time: PM, March 19, 2016

Location: Beijing Kirin Contemporary Art Center

Materials: Acrylic, ink, water, plastic buckets, ladder

Exhibition: Beyond The Action

Curator: Xixi, Jonas Stampe, Chen Han Bing

Exhibition period: January 16, 2016 - April 6, 2016

Photograph: Yang Chao

Course of performance

According to the initial plan, the audience was supposed to fill the acrylic installation with water and ink. With some pushing and lifting by the artist and participators, a series of actions would form an ink "ren" (the Chinese character for 'people'). However, due to the unexpected leak from the transparent vessel, the performance ended with ink flowing on the ground.

About Human

The work, People, continues Xiao Lu's response to the concept of yin and yang. In Eastern philosophy, yin and yang, as the two core elements that make up nature, reinforce and neutralise each other. The opposition and interaction between them contribute to establishing the rules for everything in the universe. With "ink as yin, water as yang," the audience poured water, then ink, into the vessel, indicating the fusion of yin and yang. From the original idea, the Chinese character for 'people,' written with one stroke to the left and another to the right, represented a kind of constrained condition in a person, a living body, both internally and externally. When the artist tired during the performance, the audience began to participate. Following the theory of yin and yang as a tiny part of nature, the collaboration and interaction represented individuals advancing the shared development of human society. Artist and participants shared the burden of the increasing weight of the liquid, trying to keep "People" balanced.

However, the leak unbalanced the relative state unpredictably. In fact, there is an evolutionary basis for everything in the world that yin and yang created, which precisely emphasised that it is also a non-static, dynamic process.

Wang Huiqin

Translated from Chinese by Wang Huiqin

Human video ( Part )

Video: Standing Studio

Video Edit: Xiao Lu