For this cycle of queering abhinaya, I was paired with Shyamala. She helped me brainstorm ways to bring performative life to the Chinese colonial travel accounts of Taiwan from "triple-weave."
colonial mapping I (in-progress study) from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.
password "confucian"
FEEDBACK QUESTIONS:
1) What draws you in; what do you find compelling? Are there parts where you're bored, confused, or otherwise not engaged?
2) I'm thinking of giving the Chinese language a greater presence in the piece. I can do this by adding Chinese to the labels and/or possibly finding the original travelogue texts and getting a native Mandarin speaker to read them before the English translations (this will be much more work). Are you interested in this possibility, and if so, how much Chinese would you like to be present?
3) How might you imagine this being translated into live performance?
4) What relationship do you see with "blood-run"?
5) Other thoughts?
BACKGROUND/CONTEXT:
I've been continuing to read Emma Jinhua Teng's Taiwan's Imagined Geography, which has shed some light on the nuances of the particular colonial writings excerpted in triple-weave. According to Teng, there are two main colonial perspectives on Taiwan during this era of Qing expansionism: (a) a "rhetoric of privation" that constructs the Taiwanese aborigine as a brutish savage and (b) a "rhetoric of primitivism" that romanticizes the aborigine as a sort of "noble savage" (62). The rhetoric of privation is deeply informed by classical Confucian texts, while the rhetoric of primitivism is very much the product of Taoist philosophy and imagery. This study draws more on the texts written from the "rhetoric of privation" perspective.
Teng also describes the changing cartography in the Ming (the Han Chinese dynasty preceding the Qing dynasty) and Qing dynasties. Whereas Ming maps portray China as a naturally bounded territory (Taiwan being a terra incognita far away beyond the seas), Qing maps include Taiwan as a peripheral part of China at the very edge of the world/map. I was particularly fascinated that some maps were not drawn from a bird's eye view, but instead as if standing on the south-eastern coast of China in the Fujian province looking across the roiling waves at Taiwan. This perspective positions Taiwan as separate from the Qing empire and informs the camera angle that I used in my study. Many of the labels on the rocks (country of women, dogs, two-bodied people, hairy people, etc.) are from actual maps from the late Ming period (40).
I was planning to create two more approaches to mapping: one reflecting the Taoist-primitivist-bird's eye view map, and one highlighting Taiwan as part of Austronesia, but did not manage for this round.
REFERENCES
Teng, Emma Jinhua. 2004. Taiwan's Imagined Geography: Chinese Colonial Travel Writing and Pictures, 1683-1895. Harvard East Asian Monographs: Cambridge.
colonial mapping I (in-progress study) from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.
password "confucian"
FEEDBACK QUESTIONS:
1) What draws you in; what do you find compelling? Are there parts where you're bored, confused, or otherwise not engaged?
2) I'm thinking of giving the Chinese language a greater presence in the piece. I can do this by adding Chinese to the labels and/or possibly finding the original travelogue texts and getting a native Mandarin speaker to read them before the English translations (this will be much more work). Are you interested in this possibility, and if so, how much Chinese would you like to be present?
3) How might you imagine this being translated into live performance?
4) What relationship do you see with "blood-run"?
5) Other thoughts?
BACKGROUND/CONTEXT:
I've been continuing to read Emma Jinhua Teng's Taiwan's Imagined Geography, which has shed some light on the nuances of the particular colonial writings excerpted in triple-weave. According to Teng, there are two main colonial perspectives on Taiwan during this era of Qing expansionism: (a) a "rhetoric of privation" that constructs the Taiwanese aborigine as a brutish savage and (b) a "rhetoric of primitivism" that romanticizes the aborigine as a sort of "noble savage" (62). The rhetoric of privation is deeply informed by classical Confucian texts, while the rhetoric of primitivism is very much the product of Taoist philosophy and imagery. This study draws more on the texts written from the "rhetoric of privation" perspective.
Teng also describes the changing cartography in the Ming (the Han Chinese dynasty preceding the Qing dynasty) and Qing dynasties. Whereas Ming maps portray China as a naturally bounded territory (Taiwan being a terra incognita far away beyond the seas), Qing maps include Taiwan as a peripheral part of China at the very edge of the world/map. I was particularly fascinated that some maps were not drawn from a bird's eye view, but instead as if standing on the south-eastern coast of China in the Fujian province looking across the roiling waves at Taiwan. This perspective positions Taiwan as separate from the Qing empire and informs the camera angle that I used in my study. Many of the labels on the rocks (country of women, dogs, two-bodied people, hairy people, etc.) are from actual maps from the late Ming period (40).
I was planning to create two more approaches to mapping: one reflecting the Taoist-primitivist-bird's eye view map, and one highlighting Taiwan as part of Austronesia, but did not manage for this round.
REFERENCES
Teng, Emma Jinhua. 2004. Taiwan's Imagined Geography: Chinese Colonial Travel Writing and Pictures, 1683-1895. Harvard East Asian Monographs: Cambridge.
From Meena:
ReplyDeleteI think this is great! Love the textures! It's SO the ocean. And the rocks. You know I love rocks. I had an image that the rocks and/or labels could be dropped on the fabric. To me this could accentuate the colonial idea of 'discovery' - that people and places did not "exist" (or "civilized") prior to colonization. And how colonial mapping is often arbitrary, random, and just generally fucked up. And then what about if there was some kind of resistance/critique? That the labels and rocks get moved around, mixed up, thrown out etc?
I think adding the Chinese text instead and/or alongside the English text will make it more specific to this context/history. I like your ideas on this. I mean, I like understanding the English text but I am open to not understanding or understanding less!
In terms of performance, I don't know. I would love to see this live and big. That fabric is so beautiful and textural. What happens if waves of the fabric took up a large section of floor. There is someone (you?) writing/dropping/placing labels on rocks. Perhaps rocks get moved, added, taken away. The filming then could happen live too (you?) and projected live. Although I can imagine this as beautiful and mysterious beginning of something, I don't know about placing the act of colonial "discovery" as the beginning of the narrative.
Definitely connected to blood-run. The rocks are continued. The awesome textures are continued. This seems like "past" and not written in 'your voice.' blood-run feels more "present" and directly linked to your voice.