​AAIS students launches online performance pieces, ‘Origin’ in Beijing​ and ‘Down Here’ in Chongqing

Sometimes you know a story is drawing to close when the beginning replays. It is a common tool employed in story-telling that reminds the audience that the story itself is not ending, the characters have been and continue to be in a state of becoming. However, the narrator's role is now complete, the story has transcended the teller. The once impressionable becomes the now knowledgeable. The present becomes loaded with potentiality. It is the pursuit of this potentiality that inspires us to tell stories in the first place.

There is an urge to unify the dimensions through the act of performance which produces the space. Memories that we tackle are the creators of the atmosphere of the event. Fragments are exposed and re-composed to touch the origin. Edges and depths of the past echo in the now.

‘Origin’ is a series of interactive and immersive projects that have been inspired by the notion of larger-than-life childhood aspirations and animated memories of reconciliation. With an interdisciplinary practice at our core, our concepts are translated through multiple mediums that exist in both physical and virtual realms complementing each other. ‘Origin’ is also the start of many projects to come that expand on this culture of thought.

‘Origin’ is organised by a team of AAIS 2020/21 students: Can Aksan, Changyu Yang, Chen Ma, Jiayue Yu, Lingling Li, Qiang Haung, Shirine Lee, Tong Gao, Wei Wang, Yishan Liu, Yangyang Ni, Yufeng Hou, Yi Yang, Yue Zhong, Yunheng Huang, Yuyang Cheng, Yuxin Dong, Zoya Currimbhoy

Register to attend online from 24–26 March

What is your role in the world you live in? What makes you who you are and who you will be?

‘Down Here’ is a live performance that takes place in a tea house in one of the oldest districts of Chongqing in China. The area is home to the stagnant old power plants and railways, the employees and families who still live there, the active art schools and galleries, and the wandering art practitioners. The teahouse's space carries the past and present of these different people, where they gather and disperse. In this community, the everyday environment, the space in which one is allowed to grow, influences one's identity. The ebb and flow of life stages and manipulations on a larger scale guide one's life in detail. This work attempts to present the daily and create a dialogue with those who experience it, and find a balance between being there and arriving here.

AAIS student Kexin Zhang has organised this event, which will take place on Zoom at 1pm GMT on Tuesday 23 and Wednesday 24 March 2021.

Join the event

Meeting ID: 461 090 1006

Passcode: 9Z9CDK