The first performance here in Beijing went OK. I now know that there is a performance there, which is quite a relief but I also see how much more I will have to do. This is going to be a very complex piece if it is to rise to the challenges that it proposes. On the first level however I was happy that I managed to hold it together in Chinese, that was the challenge for Thursday. Now, looking back at it I see how what I did had many similarities to the first performances of previous works of mine: rough, semi improvised and working with the space and people present. That is fine for a first performance, for a try out but now the serious work begins on the surface of the performance. I see how the actions need to modify one another rather than erase one another as they presently do to a greater extent. This erasure creates repetition rather than evolution which what I want to achieve. I also see how there are many missed opportunities in the text-action interaction which I will have to do something about. There will have to be some re-writing and some alteration to the actions but only as much as I will be able to incorporate in time for the next performance, a week today in Xiamen.
Here in Beijing I am staying at the Yoyo hotel and I met over breakfast a golf-course designer named Ron from North Dakota. I now know more about constructing golf courses in China than ever imagined I would ever get to know.
I saw a concert of Irish musicians last night in a rather formal concert hall. It was odd for me to observe a culture I am familiar with from bars in Kentish Town and Kilburn presented on a large stage in China as world music. Of course something is lost in this relocation but I also saw how it represents far more than it did previously. They become the face of Ireland and polish up their act to make it presentable on the large stage. This made me wonder if it was possible to present almost anything on a large stage if you find the right way to package and stage it. I had to think of early Fluxus concerts in Germany which were, on occasion, presented in proper concert halls and wonder if such a framing were possible today. I think there are some limitations but I also think that there are more possibilities than I generally assume there are. When things travel a distance they often end up in more formal spaces out of the necessities of production so I should perhaps try to see if there are ways to imagine making these crossovers more successfully as I tend to resist them at present as I have nothing to do with such spaces in the UK.
Today I will do some work on the performance then head out to an opening of a friend’s exhibition at C-Space in the Cao Changdi art district.
