19 May 2016
Video Installation & Performance
International Afternoon: Whose Learning?
Date and Time: 19 May 2016 (Thursday), 3:00pm
Venue: Toni-Areal, Pfingstweidstrasse 96, Zurich, Aktionsraum (Directions)
Speakers: Daniel Späti, Jörg Scheller, Nina Willimann, Mayumi Arai, Eva Lin Yingchi, Isabelle Sprenger, Benjamin Ryser, Simon Dietersdorfer
Video Installation / Performance:
How to Disappear (completely)
Date and Time: 19 May 2016 (Thursday), 8:00pm
Venue: Toni-Areal, Pfingstweidstrasse 96, Zurich, Concert Foyer (Level 7) (Directions)
Artists: Nina Willimann and Mayumi Arai
“How to Disappear (completely)” is a series of practices around the process of disappearing physically or metaphorically, temporarily and partially. In Chinese tradition, matters concerning the psyche and attainment of deeper insight are often approached via the body, not via the cognitive reflection. The basic idea of the Chinese martial Art T’ai chi ch’uan (or Tai Chi) is linked to the philosophical principle that, if one uses hardness to resist violent force, then both sides are certainly to be injured. Instead, students are taught not to directly fight or resist an incoming force, but to meet it in softness and follow its motion while remaining in physical contact until the incoming force of attack exhausts itself or can be redirected.
Being both strangers in Hong Kong and Tai Chi beginners, we took this basic idea as our base for the development of a series of practices in order of trying to integrate, to become part of, to gradually disappear in a foreign environment.
The video installation was developed in the Master-semester-program Transcultural Collaboration 2015.
