《Nine Wan》Echoes in the Spacetime Fissure:

Final Call for Wuzhen Theatre Festival ‘Elsewhere Live’ on 24 October!

Over 35 premier experimental musicians, artists and performers assemble—noise, body, action, poetry… A 10-hour non-stop ‘emergent’ fantasia where audiences become co-creators, forging irreplicable artistry through improvisational fervour. Coalescing into a ‘resonant sound field’.

One show only! From dusk till dawn (14:00-01:00) — Don't miss out on the fantastic live! Secure your place for this unrepeatable super-experience!▼

Wuzhen Theatre Festival 2025 ‘Elsewhere Live’

Graphic Design: Zhou Boyan

The Scene of Surge / Chapter One

《Nine Wan》

Artistic Director: Yu'er

Stage Director: Cheng Xi

Artists:

A R C H I T E C T, Yuri Nagaoka, Ioku Ero Nikaido, /guibog, Kae Takahashi, P.O.V., Huang Huan, Huang Aiqi, Jiang Zhuyun, Jin Jinjin, Liu Pi, Liu Yaohua, Li Jianhong, Li Yanzeng, Wang Ziheng, Wu Quan, Torturing Nurse, Yang Kuku, YAMAHAHA, Ye Funa, Yi Nan | Yuan Ye, Yi, Seisaku, Zhu Tian, Zhao Ziyi, (    )

Art Groups:

Downstream (Gong Hao, Zi Jie, Yuanziyuan, et al.)

xiaozu (Zhao Ziyi, konini, Zhao Xuan)

Art Project：

Cement Park (trees, Unitrip, Wang Yitu, (    ), Gao Xu, Xie Songqing, Lyu Desheng)

Date:24 October 2025 (14:00–1:00)

Episode 1: Bump,bump (14:00–18:00) – Performance focus on‘the body’

Episode 2: Hu (19:00–01:00) – Performance focus on the‘sound’

Venue: West Lakeside, Ye You Shen Theatre, Wuzhen

Foreword:

“The Scene of Surge”
— The Body’s Return and Resonance with the Sound Field

Today, our era is caught in a paradox: while the body is constantly recorded, displayed, and optimized, it simultaneously falls into deep alienation and forgetting. The will of algorithms tames the body into the accessory of digital images, while performance-driven systems compress it into an efficient operating machine. The result is a widespread “separation of body and mind, divergence of knowledge and action,” where lived experience dissolves in the endless scrolling of virtual interfaces.

Our response is to return to the body—the most primal and direct medium. Through embodied collective actions, curatorial practices, and socially engaged performances, we aim to reawaken an original sense of life, constructing a temporary emotional community that emphasizes co-presence and resonance.The Scene of Surgeis one concrete practice of this approach.

I. The Scene of Surge: Improvised Co-Creation and Socially Engaged Performance

The Scene of Surgeis a semi-improvised Gesamtkunstwerk in the form of collective theater. It seeks to dissolve the boundaries between contemporary art, performance, and everyday life, exploring aesthetic paths of emergent co-creation through actions, sounds, poetry, installations, documents, and moving images.

Emergence theory emphasizes wholeness, dynamism, and interactivity in natural and social complex systems. Its core lies in revealing how local interactions generate higher-order behaviors that exceed the individual. Complex systems operate across multiple layers, where higher-order behaviors depend on lower-order interactions. Nonlinear local variations may trigger global effects in chaotic systems. Self-organizing systems can spontaneously form order through local rules.

Drawing on this theory, the project merges diverse groups and art forms, triggering growth through localized actions that gradually form an ordered whole. Within a bounded time and space, it constructs a collective theater based on bodily co-presence. Its central medium is a “resonant sound field” built collectively through the bodies, voices, and actions of all participants. Here, the goal of art is not to produce “works,” but to generate collective life experiences that continuously grow and evolve.

This practice extends the social turn of avant-garde art, aesthetically reconstructing temporary human connections amidst historical upheavals, while providing a bodily space to resist atomized existence.

II. Collective Theater: A Chorus as Temporary Community

Collective theater is the aesthetic and social model underpinningThe Scene of Surge. Its structural inspiration comes from the “chorus” mechanism—independent voices merging under common rules into a unified, expressive whole.

In this model, everyone simultaneously becomes creator and performer. Each person entering the space, regardless of their initial identity, signs an implicit agreement to perform by enacting “costume transformation” as an entry ritual. Such rules are not constraints but a framework of empowerment, functioning as bodily devices that establish equality and freedom. By suspending social identities, participants are offered a safe zone free from everyday judgment, stimulating agency in self-expression.

Rules secure both the cohesion of the “collective” and the uniqueness of the “individual.” Presence, posture, gaze, even silence of individual—all weave the texture of performance. The performance is not confined to a stage but permeates the field as interpersonal interaction and energy exchange. The relationship between actor and audience is not one of seeing and being seen; all merge into the “crowd” as one whole. Its core lies in seeking a collective, spontaneous, emergent poetics born from collisions and compressions within the crowd. This poetics arises from the accumulation and resonance of countless small actions.

III. Resonant Sound Field: The Vibrational Core

The Scene of Surgeenvisions the entire site as a Gesamtkunstwerk imbued with democratic significance. What is integrated is not merely traditional genres—art, poetry, theater, music—but the totality of participants’ senses and actions, ultimately converging into a perceptible “resonant sound field.”

Sound, the medium most diffusive and most capable of bodily resonance, becomes the central connector of individuals and unifier of the space. It exceeds linguistic meaning, working directly onthe level of emotion and the body.

This sound field vibrates into being through participants’ breathing, whispers, footsteps, and shouts, in resonance with sound events organized by the artists. Performative actions, poetry recitations, experimental music, and electronic pulses serve as tactile guides; the midnight DJ amplifies the collective heartbeat. It is both a physical field of vibration and an emotional resonance chamber. In this space, emotions and movements are received, amplified, and fed back, forming ecological networks. The “work” is no longer an object to be viewed but a life experience generated within and through all bodies.

IV. Corporeality: The Aesthetics and Micropolitics of Life

Within the “resonant sound field,” the body is not merely a medium or tool for artistic expression—it is the expression itself, not only a bearer of meaning but also its origin.

V. Art as Life Practice

Ultimately, the core medium ofThe Scene of Surgeis life of human being itself. Art here plays the role of catalyst and space-maker, enabling people to temporarily step out of ordinary orders and enter a purer, more instinctive texture of life.

When art shifts from “object production” to “situation construction,” from “image creation” to “resonance generation,” it acquires an unprecedented social force. This force does not depend on grand declarations but lies in its ability to provide fleeting yet authentic life experiences in an era of technological acceleration and bodily forgetting—to prove the body remains alive, and that we still long for and are capable of forming profound, embodied connections with others.

In short,The Scene of Surge, as a semi-improvised collective theater experiment, seeks to explore the many possibilities of art as life practice.

Cheng Xi

August 30, 2025

A R T I S T S

A R C H I T E C T

A R C H I T E C T is an artistic project conceived by Alex Damboianu, a Romanian sound artist and architect based in Beijing since 2011 and Chongqing since 2022. Mirroring the conceptual foundations of his architectural practice, Damboianu's sonic work functions as an immersive medium designed to facilitate introspection and meditative engagement with the human condition. A preoccupation with the sublime is a recurring element within his artistic expression. The project's compositions are characterized by their abstract nature, often exploring predominantly dark, atmospheric, and at times unsettling auditory landscapes. A defining feature of A R C H I T E C T's live performances is their non-repetitive and contingent nature; each is a unique event privileging extensive improvisation and spontaneous interaction. A R C H I T E C T's work has been released by international labels including METASONAR, New Romanian Weird, and Seippelabel.

Yuri Nagaoka

Founder of Dance Medium, Butoh dancer, choreographer, and director. Yuri began studying ballet and modern dance at age 10, and in her youth encountered Butoh, which she has devoted herself to performing and teaching for over forty years. Since 1999, she has given workshops and performances across Europe, the U.S., Asia, and Latin America. She appeared in Masaki Iwana’s Butoh film Vermilion Souls, which won the Grand Prize at the Portobello FilmFestival. In 2012, she received the Japan Dance Critics’ Association Award forComing Home.

EroIo Nikaidō

EroIo Nikaidō, an independent artist from Hong Kong, was born in Guangzhou, China in 1991 and has lived in Hong Kong since infancy. Io mainly creates solo Butoh theater and performance art. Before encountering Butoh, Io began acting in plays at age 13, trained in physical theater from age 16, and presented the first solo performance art work at 19. Io’s works have been invited to major festivals, museums, and private theaters both in China and abroad.

/guibog

/guibog is a French creator based in Beijing, exploring the fields of circuit and data bending, technical and industrial objects upcycling, e-voodoo and mechano-biotics. He keeps a menagerie of soniferous and luminous robots, machines and other devices in his atelier, in the hutongs. He occasionally brings them to happenings, exhibitions, performances and installations, where they summon sparks of life from electric cables and electronic bodies. His most recent installations include Inochi, "Cycle of Life"命, a big pregnant creature strapped on the ceiling of Yuanliao space, a bar in the center of Beijing and Saturn, a rotating throne head which illuminates the famous club Groundless Factory, in 798 art district in Beijing.

Kae Takahashi

She is a musician dedicated to exploring the freedom of expression, unbound by traditional musical definitions, embracing every form of creativity that emerges in her mind with fervent curiosity. Though her methods may seem varied, her creative core remains steadfast, driven by an unwavering conviction to move forward. Through experimental noise performances, she deeply examines the psychological tension and fear between silence and chaos, blending bass noise with raw vocal screams to construct auditory spaces that approach the edge of dread.

P.O.V.

P.O.V. is an experimental noise music project based in Oita Prefecture, Japan. Initially formed in 2015 as a noise band, it transitioned into a solo creative endeavor by mid-2016, focusing on improvised performances using modular synthesizers, spanning various experimental music genres such as Harsh Noise and Ambient. Beyond his role as a creator and performer, P.O.V. actively engages in curating and managing music scenes. He organizes the concert series *Hell Scroll*, which consistently invites musicians from Japan and abroad, unrestricted by genre, to foster an open and diverse platform for exchange. Additionally, alongside local Oita noise artist S_B_B, he co-manages the experimental music label CRUSTON CLUB, promoting the release and dissemination of local and international avant-garde music.

Huang Huan

Huang Huan is an artist based in Chongqing. In recent years, she has been influenced by Chinese Taoism and Japanese philosophy of material sorrow, and she has extended her exploration of industrial decaying landscape and nature’s tragic cycles of futile birth and death. Her means of expression are meditative rituals combining drone sounds, voice and body gestures. Her works include land art, art performance, installations and experimental sound.

Aiqi Huang (Sattva)

Aiqi Huang (Sattva), is an experimental musician, composer, film composer, and sound/performance artist; founder of XVIIExperimental and co-founder of Immortal Manifestation. Born and raised in Shenzhen, they studied classical piano from a very young age. In 2018, they moved to New York to study at The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, majoring in Jazz Studies with a concentration on Jazz/Contemporary piano performance. At the same time, they developed a huge interest in improvisation and studied it in-depth. During their education experience, they studied with musicians such as Wang Xubo, Li Lin, Ned Rothenberg, Brian Marsella, Sylvie Courvoisier, Angelica Sanchez, David Van Tieghem, etc. In 2023, they moved back to China after graduating with honors and are now based in Beijing, China. Deeply inspired and influenced by traditional Chinese opera, music of Tibetan Buddhism, Chinese folk music, and world music, their works are usually presented in non-traditional scoring (graphic score) and non-traditional ways of instrumental performance (prepared piano, voice as instrument, etc.).

JiangZhuyun

Jiang Zhuyun is currently based in Hangzhou. Guided by a problem-mechanism approach, his practice spans multiple media, oscillating between sound and music. He focuses on the development and evolution of music under the influence of 20th-century technology, immersed in the quagmire of media archaeology from that era. He currently serves as director of the Free Art Studio at the School of Intermedia Art(SIMA), China Academy of Art, where he teaches programming, sound, and creative practice.

Jin Jinjin

Gambler

Liu Pi

Bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Studio 4, Oil Painting Department, School of Plastic Arts, Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), Beijing. his works primarily involve mediums such as easel painting, stop-motion animation or video, sound installations, or performance art, presented in static or real-time forms within exhibitions or live settings. In music, he engages in personal or collaborative projects and releases as a producer, composer, and performer, primarily through album publications. In 2024, an instrumental album he produced was nominated for the "Best Instrumental Album" award at the 35th Golden Melody Awards in Taiwan and simultaneously won the "Best Jazz Album" award at the 2nd Billboard · The Wave Music Awards.

Liu Yaohua

After five years of primary school, five years of junior high, five years of high school, and five years of university, graduated from the Architecture Department of Chang'an University（CHD）in 2008 with a bachelor’s degree in Architecture. He began creating contemporary art in 2012, with notable works including: ‘Water in Fire’ (2025), ‘Wishing You Safe and Sound’ (2022), and ‘One Billboard’ (2023–2024). In addition to his work as an artist, he has curated several exhibitions and projects, such as: ‘’You Are Not An Outsider: First Artists' Expo (2024), ‘Lāng Zou’ (2023–), ‘Thus: Garang Solo Exhibition’ (2023), ‘Topic Painting - Humor & Mobius Video Hall’ (2021–2023), and ‘Off Stage Performance’ (2021).

Li Jianhong

Li Jianhong , Noise/improvisational musician, participating in the ensembles VagusNerve and Mind Fiber in addition to solo projects. Since 2008, he has pioneered new creative directions under the banner of “environment improvisation,” exploring the interplay between environment and performan.

Li Yanzeng

Sound Artist / Electronic Musician / Producer.

His work spans from music, video art to installations etc. His creativeness is based on minimalistic aesthetics and pursues spontaneous and non-narrative expressions on the spot. The live performance is mainly presented through hardware equipment and the style is towards experimental electronics, noise improvisation, techno and etc.

Wang Ziheng

Born in Dagang oilfield and now lives in Beijing, Wang Ziheng is one active free improve/noise/psychedelic musicians in the new generation of Beijing's underground music scene. He is also the initiator of non-livehouse series concert “荒音祭”. Deeply influenced by Kaoru Abe and John Coltrane, his commonly used instruments are tenor saxophone, human voice and noise. His solo performance is bold and full of passion. The profound understanding to avant-garde jazz and free improvisation is beyond his peers, empowering him with more possibilities. With great originality and creativity, his style is not restricted within in free improve or noise, even drone or rock could be adopted by him and enriched his music. Delusion through saxophone to a place where the language can't reach it.

Wu Quan

Wu Quan, his artistic practice spans both visual and auditory realms, encompassing multimedia performances, installations, music, video, records and films, which he presents through exhibitions, productions, publications, and performances. His improvisational music performances explore the unexpected qualities of sound in spontaneous situations, emphasizing the complex interplay between time, space, and location.

Torturing Nurse

Torturing Nurse, formed in Shanghai in 2004, is a pioneering noise project known for extreme sonic intensity and improvised performances. Their work often merges harsh noise with body actions and strong visual impact, establishing them as one of the most influential representatives of China’s experimental and noise music scene.

Yang Kuku

Yang Kuku is from Beijing, China. He began performing at the end of 2021 and joined the “ghostmass” in the same year. In April 2023, he participated in the first Noise Festival with “ghostmass”, and in July, he participated in the production of “ghostmass'”first album "Pain Kvvvlt/ooong", responsible for sound and noise.In 2022, he formed "Daily" band with Zhao Ziyi.

HuangLei- YAMAHAHA

Huang Lei, a sound and visual experimental artist, based in Shanghai.YAMAHAHA is a modularnoise project of him, primarily uses modular synthesizers, DIY sound-generating tools, and modified toys,he continues to explore the unconventional logic uses of synthesizers and pursues the ultimate energy in sound.He is a member of the noisecore band RHYTHMICSHIT, and also the noise duo CLANDESTINOCLAN.In addition to being a noisician, he is also a venue operator and event arranger. In October 2023, he co-founded the radical and experimental venue called trigger in Shanghai, primarily responsible for sound equipment and technical work.

Ye Funa

Funa Ye [she/they] born in Kunming, Yunnan, is an artist and researcher who lives and works in London and Beijing. Her practice critically engages with the realities of daily life and the perceived nexus between authority and various societal domains, such as differing power structures and margin groups. Her politically charged art uses pastiche to critique and satirize cultural uniformity. She uses humor to explore the relationship between authority and diverse social cultures. Examples include the stereotypes of marginalized minorities and others in the mass media, and the fictitious landscapes woven into the fabric of a "perfect" aesthetic. By citing, parodying, or satirizing cultural paradigms, she categorizes and addresses these archetypal systems, analyzing and extending them. In recent years, she has become increasingly interested in organizing participatory art projects.

Yinan | Yuan Ye

Yinan | Yuan Ye are the co-hosts of the poetry and music podcast Palimpsest｜Hang Jian. The program’s name draws on the image of a “palimpsest”: as old writings are erased, new content is continuously layered on top, accumulating in strata, and gaining renewed life. Hang Jian unfolds in this spirit—treating poetry as the warp and music as the weft, allowing texts to be interpreted, refracted, and reborn within the space of music. The podcast explores the intersections of contemporary and historical, personal, and public, serving both as an artistic experiment and as a reflection oriented toward the future.

Yi

Born in China and nomadic across the world, Yi isa Butoh dancer whose creations explore multidimensional spaces between the visible and the invisible. From 2019 to 2022, Yi was a resident mentor at Himalaya Subbody Butoh School, and has performed and taught in Europe, Australia, Morocco, India, Indonesia, and Malaysia. Yi’s works have appeared at international performance art festivals including ButohOut, Ex..it!, Floating Castle, and Space Between. Since 2019, Yi has studied and collaborated with Seisaku, performing in his choreographies Soul of the Earth and Invisible Forest.

Seisaku

Seisaku studied under Butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata until Hijikata’s death, then continued with Hijikata’s principal dancer Yoko Ashikawa before joining Hakutōbō until 1996. Named “Seisaku” by Masakatsu Gunji, he has since pursued a career of solo performance and worldwide transmission of Butoh. Since 2004, he collaborated as dancer and choreographer in Dance Medium, founded by Yuri Nagaoka. He received the Japan Dance Critics’ Association Award in 2012 and published his book Butoh Fool: With the Words of Tatsumi Hijikata in 2022.

Zhu Tian

Zhu Tian, born in China, is currently living and working in the UK. She obtained a BA in Economics from the University of Nottingham in 2006, an MA in Sound Design from Bournemouth University in 2007, and a second MA in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art in 2014. Zhu Tian's artistic practice encompasses installation, sculpture, performance, sound, text, and video. She is known for her use of humour, satire, and sometimes provocative approaches to explore social structures, power relations, and the existential and intellectual crises individuals face in contemporary life. Her works often carry a sharp criticial edge and intense personal narratives, drawing on elements of literature, philosophy, and theater to interrogate the periphery of mainstream ideologies. Through this, she prompts the audience to reconsider the interplay of power and freedom in everyday experience. Constantly seeking new possibilities of dialogue between art and society, Zhu’s works have been exhibited at institutions including the Victoria and Albert Museum (UK), Palais de Tokyo (France), Centraal Museum (Netherlands), and the Scottish National Galleries (UK). In 2025, her work was acquired by the Centre Pompidou for its permanent collection. She was awarded the Catlin Art Prize (UK, 2015), the Broomhill National Sculpture Prize (UK, 2014), and was selected as the emerging sound artist in the UK in 2009. Selected solo exhibitions：A Long Defeat, Art Basel, HK, 2025; 150119.F, Sotheby's，Paris, 2019; The Best of Everything, Galerie Huit，HK, 2017; She Wished He Would Haul Her Up To the Bedroom And, Mocube, Beijing, 2017; Throat, Lychee One，London, 2016; Dear Boss, Cabin Gallery，London, 2015; 00:04:19, AKP Space，Xiamen, 2015.

Art Group

"Downstream"

We built a canoe ourselves and sails from Wuhan down the Yangtze River, eventually reaching Shanghai and Wuzhen. A portion of the boat will float on the water in Wuzhen, while several drivers on shore will tow the floating object, attempting a coordinated and responsive movement. While in Wuzhen, this performance will be carried out in conjunction with Ye Funa's "Dragon DIY Workshop," cruising the streets and approaching the water.

Gong Hao

Curator and artist. Born in the Jianghan Plain, he loves mountains and rivers. He just finished building a boat and is currently rafting along the Yangtze River (from Wuhan to Shanghai). He updates the news of his project on his Douyin account; search for his ID: "豪子要直播".

Zijie

Artist, long-term interest in urbanization and space, technological action, and DIY etc. He enjoys swimming and boating and look forward to connecting more deeply with the local water.

Yuan Ziyuan

Artist often simply want to make things more interesting and fun.

Voice: Qiao Zhou recently regained the swimming skills he learned in his paid training classes as a child. In August 2024, he swam to the Chaoshan Dongfu Xinfu Troupe as a saxophone player. This year, he swam to Wuhan, which was worth the money.

xiaozu (小组工作)

xiaozu is an artist-run hutong house founded in 2024 on Gulou West Street in Beijing. It focuses on the improvised, the collective, and the unfolding. Its activities include live performances, exhibitions, screenings, workshops, and night school programs.

Zhao Ziyi

Born in Beijing in 2007, he began performing in late 2022 and started organizing the "You and Me" music festival in 2023. In 2024, he co-founded the physical space "xiaozu". With plain sounds and a body that often feels unwieldy, he seems largely unconcerned most of the time. His work is frequently solitary, simple, still, and self-damaging.

konini

Born in 1996, graduated from Michigan State University with a BFA in Mathematics and Fine Arts. In 2021, she founded the art space Ma Shang Mei (马上没). Since 2024, she has been co-running xiaozu (小组工作) in Gulou, Beijing, with Zhao Ziyi and Zhao Xuan. Together, they also form an unnamed performance collective.

Zhao Xuan

She studied at the California College of the Arts and the Central Academy of Fine Arts and currently lives and works in Beijing. Her practice focuses on liveness, human complexities, and a raw sense of reality, encompassing performance, painting, installation, and conceptual art. Together with a few friends, she co-founded the physical space ‘xiaozu’ on Gulou West Street, which hosts activities such as screenings, exhibitions, experimental music, and live performance actions.

Art Project

CEMENT PARK

Founded by SOWERART in Shanghai in 2017, Cement Park is a dynamic project for live art, encompassing the weekly Cement Park LIVE HOUSE series and the annual Cement Park Live Art Festival. Dedicated to performance art, theater, and sound, it embraces freedom, improvisation, and experimentation as core values. Initially rooted in SOWERART Space (2017–2019), Cement Park has evolved into a nomadic initiative since 2020, activating diverse spaces and cultivating new possibilities for live artistic encounters.

Unitrip玎玎

Unitrip is an artist who penetrates illusions into her sounds, a sleepwalking wizard in everlasting darkness. She founded a trans media performance group “Silence wave ”in 2017 and is fascinated by poetry (including sound poetry, tactile poetry), site-specific theater, sound art, performance art, and video art creation. She is fascinated by suspended time and microscopic matter, which is a rotten illusion, a beating atom, an internalized container, free between the boundaries of virtual and reality. She had participated in the MIDI Music Festival, A bunch of Noise Experimental Music Festival, Shanghai Improvisation Art Festival, Dongshan Island Yibohui, Daliangshan Drama Festival, Cement Park Art Festival, the opening performance of the "I Never Dream Otherwise than Awake

Journeys in Sound" Sound Art Exhibition of West Bund Art Museum, "Listen to the Road" sound art exhibition performance of Doland Art Museum, etc., and have also done public welfare sound healing workshops for autistic children. Currently underway is an art film and theater project "Asexual propagation " launched two years ago, with the theme of thinking about the objectification, degradation, and atomization of intimate relationships at present.

(     )

(     )   Seize himself in his own room.

trees（Menglan Song）

Menglan Song (trees), born in 2001 in Hebei, China, is an independent film director and performance artist.

Works: The Tire (2021), When I Awake (2022), Whose language (2023), An An (2024).

trees’ creative practice focuses on blending diverse artistic media to establish a common language among them. She seeks a liminal space between the “liveness and past-ness” of different art forms, using it to convey the sense of nihilism prevalent among contemporary youth and the constrained realities of their lives. Through this approach, she transforms individual powerlessness into collective emotion, creating a new medium for connection—between people, and between people and objects. Her expression often takes the form of live acts, film, and interactive experiences.

Wang Yitu

Wang Yitu is a performance and cross-theatrical artist who also works with video and installation. She currently lives and works in Shanghai, China. Her practice is guided by the body, materials, and space, often transforming everyday objects into triggers for artistic dialogue. She emphasizes their materiality while viewing them as complex entities that carry both natural and sociopolitical dimensions. Her work foregrounds the notions of liveness, ephemerality, and intuitive embodied presence. Often beginning with a pure curiosity about “living organisms,” her creative process seeks to trace the intricate, interwoven elements of life as they resonate within the body. Many of her works are site-specific and unfold across diverse settings, including museums, art centers, domestic spaces, traditional and nontraditional theaters, underground clubs, and urban streets. Through these explorations, she investigates performance as a generative event, continuously engaging with states of “unfinishedness” in order to respond to reality or evoke imaginative connections.

Gao Xu

Gao Xu,The regular job is a book editor. Since 2017, I've been creating performance art in my spare time and also writing novels. Since late 2017, I've been organizing weekly "Cement Park" events in Shanghai with a group. After moving to Beijing in 2024, I've continued to organize "Cement Park" events on an irregular monthly basis, occasionally collaborating with spaces and venues on both temporary and long-term projects.

My focus is on various forms of live-action art, and I continue to explore how to create engaging and vivid live works through the imagination of tools based on spatial forms.

Xie Songqing

Xie Songqing, based in Shanghai, is currently active in the field of contemporary art. His practice spans painting, installation, and performance, with a strong conceptual focus. At present, his work explores subconscious self-performance and self-narration in everyday life, site-specific improvisational actions, as well as the intersections of conceptual experimentation and embodied experience.

Lyu Desheng

Lyu Desheng, take a breath and get some rest. I’d like to bring my beloved little Flying Eagle to Wuzhen.

Curators Introduction

Artistic Director：Yuer

Yu’er, Poet, Curator, and Intermedia Artist

Yu’er engages with contemporary art and writing through diverse artistic practices. Drawing inspiration from the bodily language of dance, she extends her exploration into visual art spaces, then transforms her visual insights into written expression. Moving fluidly across disciplines, she probes the boundaries and multiplicity of artistic creation, seeking to realize a distinctly personal mode of expression.

She is also both a poet and an organizer of poetry events. Yu’er has participated in the Beijing Poetry Festival for nine consecutive editions, receiving the Golden Sunflower Award at its 7th edition, and in 2021 was elected Chair of the Festival Council. In 2019, she took part in the Havana International Poetry Festival, with her works translated into English and Spanish. She has also been featured in the Tianwen Poetry Festival, the Qinghai Lake International Poetry Festival, the Chengdu International Poetry Week, among others.

Her published works include the poetry collections Late Spring Colors and Under the Lights, as well as the anthology Wei Jing and the Reverse Side. In 2024, she founded the Ruth International Arts Festival in the United Kingdom.

Stage Director：Cheng Xi

Curator, Theater Director, Poet

Chief Curator of the 1st Ruth International Arts Festival, UK (2024)

ChengXihas curated numerous contemporary art exhibitions, art festivals, poetry events, theater productions, and socially engaged artistic practices both in China and abroad. His long-term focus is on artistic practices that are “indescribable, unfolding, and naturally growing,” extending “art” into communities, public spaces, and the natural environment. Through explorations such as bodily participation, public engagement, experimental performance, translation of everyday life, collective creation, and spatial interventions, he constructs dynamic “body archives” and “oral memories,” traversing the boundary between theater and social space to build alternative historical narratives and dialogues with society.

His work is no longer confined to the established framework of “art,” but unfolds into a fluid, open-ended form: immediate, participatory modes of social engagement that resonate with cultural realities, thereby reasserting the social role of art in a renewed way.

These practices operate at the intersection of the “ordinary” and the “exceptional,” intertwining closely with everyday life to form an “unfinished” aesthetic of participation. By embracing what he calls “indescribability”—that which evades definition yet manifests in concrete, bodily experience—his work highlights the natural growth and cultural vitality of art in social life.

These practices are not staged as spectacles isolated from society, but emerge as lived, collective social phenomena. They are constructed upon bodily presence, shared existence, and affective encounters, creating a network of resonance. By building “temporary communities” through poetic and performative acts, they create transient but real forms of belonging and solidarity. In this sense, art is no longer a fixed object but a living “process,” a “constellation of dynamic images” shaped by social life and memory. Through this, Cheng Xi explores art as a practice of life itself, opening up more possibilities for its realization.

“Elsewhere”is a diverse experimental project and cultural platform. We activate different spaces and sites in nomadic and fluid ways, moving through the blurred zones between art and other fields, to explore the limitless possibilities of creation. This includes—but is not limited to—art, writing, film, performance, sound, the body, architecture, and any form of creative practice.

Team Members

Becca Yue, Mandy Chen, David Jiang, Huang Lei, Liang Xiaoguang, Lu Junyan, Chen Yinhong, Zuo Yoyo, Zhang Yunyi, Shi Si, Hua Ling

Visual Design: Zhou Boyan (Graphic Design), Liu Yuling (Calligraphy)

Volunteer Recruitment:

Participate in on-site filming or performance. If the performer is a stone, you are the wind or the water, and together we will create a landscape. This performance welcomes spontaneous audience participation. For participation details, please contact: chengxiart@163.com

"Elsewhere" is a multifaceted experimental project and cultural platform. We adopt a nomadic and amorphous approach to activate diverse spaces and sites, operating within the ambiguous zones between art and various disciplines to explore boundless creative possibilities. This encompasses—but is not limited to—any creative practice, including art, writing, film, performance, sound, movement, architecture, and beyond.