<Songs of the Feetless Fish>
<没有脚的鱼在河口停了一会>
2023.7 ~ present
_ao_ao_ing ensemble
In the water of Shanghai, there exists a map of migration, identity and emotion, flowing around and through the people there. Shanghai is a city built on the movement of people, capital and water, but its transience hides beneath its layers and layers of hard concrete surfaces. What forces pulled people to this city, and why are they still staying?
In 2023, _ao_ao_ing ensemble began to work on the generative, cross-media art project Songs of the Feetless Fish, discovering how the interconnected water system in the Shanghai city invokes emotional and spiritual energy during this post-COVID period of instability and insecurity. It is a project that generates a "map" with our physical bodies, emotion and actions, instead of scientific measurements. In this map, they search for untold stories of people's displacement, in the hope of finding possibilities to locate ourselves within this gigantic city. The project includes three main chapters: a series of open walking workshops, a book that traces these walks, and a performance that activates the book into time, connecting the past with the future. With collective actions they create the map. With the map they compose the book. With the book they share a different dream of Shanghai and a song that navigates for the migrations to come.
In 2023, _ao_ao_ing ensemble began to work on the generative, cross-media art project Songs of the Feetless Fish, discovering how the interconnected water system in the Shanghai city invokes emotional and spiritual energy during this post-COVID period of instability and insecurity. It is a project that generates a "map" with our physical bodies, emotion and actions, instead of scientific measurements. In this map, they search for untold stories of people's displacement, in the hope of finding possibilities to locate ourselves within this gigantic city. The project includes three main chapters: a series of open walking workshops, a book that traces these walks, and a performance that activates the book into time, connecting the past with the future. With collective actions they create the map. With the map they compose the book. With the book they share a different dream of Shanghai and a song that navigates for the migrations to come.
During the summer of 2023, the group invited the public for four walking workshops, each opening up a part of our collective feelings towards Shanghai. They initiated actions to rediscover our emotional, physical, ancestral and spiritual connections with the city. They chased cargo ships on the Huangpu River, performed healing rituals in public W.C.s, resurrected a dead river by evoking migratory memories, and explored meridian flows within their bodies. They walked, conversed, remembered, scribbled, filmed, sketched, got lost, reoriented… Any records of these actions were carefully archived, morphing into a book of Shanghai. The book mixes the stories of the summer walks with urban legends and Chinese mythologies. It is a new path to experience the city, a story of the dreamers, and a song that navigates for the migrations to come. Later, a performance will launch the book into time, linking the past and the future. That will create a shared experience, a ritual that gives life to the book and a site where the feetless fish sing.
* Co-commissioned by the Urban Walks Project and Khek Dhang Ke of Shanghai RockBund Art Museum, the project also involves the public as an essential creative force in the artistic process.