fluid cosmologies
Forma Arts & Media, London, UK
Co-curated with Samy Bee
Full Sturgeon Supermoon
1 August 2023, 7-9 pm
River Cao – I Found a Dead Bird
With sound by Nanzhen Yang
Full Blue Supermoon
31 August 2023, 7-9 pm
Bea Xu – Pericardium ᵛᵒʳᵗᵉˣ
Nanzhen Yang (in collaboration with Harry Appleyard and Nuka Nayu)
On the Full Sturgeon Supermoon on the 1st of August, Tuesday, the programme will kick off with a performance by River Cao. Taking its source from a mourning ceremony, River’s performance ‘I Found a Dead Bird’ acts as the artist’s melancholic reflection on the resurrection of marginalized queer identities in the waters of southern China. Led by the flute and bells, the viewers are invited to follow a journey that opens connections between mourners, spectres, and landscapes. To attune the viewers to the spirit of River’s performance and introduce the audience to our second event, Nanzhen Yang will not only present an audio-visual live performance at the second event on the 31st of August but also will be the guest artist on the 1st. To support the artist River Cao, Nanzhen will do two separate sound performances before and after I Found a Dead Bird. The first one of them will serve as a pre-link to River's performance, and the last one as an experimental soundscape that will close the night.
The evening of the 31st of August, Thursday, marked by the appearance of a Full Blue Supermoon, will start with the CGI-based A / V live performance by Nanzhen Yang, made in collaboration with Harry Appleyard and Nuka Nayu. Dwelling on animism and machinery, urbanization and traditional beliefs intertwined in the present, the artists propose to imagine a sacred shelter existing beyond the boundaries of time and space.
It will be later followed by Pericardium ᵛᵒʳᵗᵉˣ, a performance by Bea Xu drawing on the traditional Chinese organ body clock. Built upon the concept of the cyclical ebb and flow of energy throughout the body, the system thus shows which meridians and their associated organs and emotions are most energetically active at specific times of the day. As an act of a temporal reclamation, the performance extends from the Greenwich Meridian Line and magnifies a glitch in colonial time. Following Triple Burner ᵛᵒʳᵗᵉˣ at Milan Art Week (2022) and Kidney ᵛᵒʳᵗᵉˣ at Luna Festival (2023), the ritual at FormaHQ will take place when the qi energy is the most active in Pericardium meridian. An emergent spark of dark-fire formlessness, the time ritual spirals out of a screening of the original intervention, up to Peveril Gardens to connect with all attendant co-rituals, before spiralling back down into the lower heart of the building to end.
River Cao, I Found a Dead Bird, 2022. Part of ‘fluid cosmologies’ at Forma, August 2023, curated by Samy Bie and Anastasia Chugunova. © the artist. Photo: courtesy Forma.
River Cao, I Found a Dead Bird, 2022. Part of ‘fluid cosmologies’ at Forma, August 2023, curated by Samy Bie and Anastasia Chugunova. © the artist. Photo: courtesy Forma.
River Cao, I Found a Dead Bird, 2022. Part of ‘fluid cosmologies’ at Forma, August 2023, curated by Samy Bie and Anastasia Chugunova. © the artist. Photo: courtesy Forma.
‘fluid cosmologies’ at Forma, August 2023, curated by Samy Bie and Anastasia Chugunova. © the artist. Photo: courtesy Forma.
Nanzhen Yang, soundscape, 2023. Part of ‘fluid cosmologies’ at Forma, August 2023, curated by Samy Bie and Anastasia Chugunova. © the artist. Photo: courtesy Forma.
Bea Xu, Pericardium vortex, 2023. Part of ‘fluid cosmologies’ at Forma, August 2023, curated by Samy Bie and Anastasia Chugunova. © the artist. Photo: courtesy Forma.
Bea Xu, Pericardium vortex, 2023. Part of ‘fluid cosmologies’ at Forma, August 2023, curated by Samy Bie and Anastasia Chugunova. © the artist. Photo: courtesy Forma.
Bea Xu, Pericardium vortex, 2023. Part of ‘fluid cosmologies’ at Forma, August 2023, curated by Samy Bie and Anastasia Chugunova. © the artist. Photo: courtesy Forma.