Le Xi: Exploring Performance Art in the Digital Age
In 2010, I visited the Museum of Modern Art in New York and saw the retrospective exhibition "The Artist is Present" by Marina Abramović. This exhibition really got me thinking deeply about performance art. I noticed that performance art has undergone a significant transformation - from an era where artists left behind little documentation, to now, where every performance is recorded in some way. This observation sparked a lot of reflection for me.
Between 2010 and 2017, I was constantly pondering how digital life has impacted our lives and artistic practices. I looked to Marina Abramović and Ulay's classic 1977 performance piece "Relation in Time" as a reference point. Their work used extreme bodily actions to captivate the audience, emphasizing the performative and dramatic effects. However, I started wondering how I could use digital technology to extract the pure essence of the physical action itself, separating it from the performative context. In 2017, I created the work " Husband and Wife Run in Sync " - both a continuation and a challenge to the classic piece.
Le Xi, Husband and Wife Run in Sync, 01:01(Loop), video, dimensions variable, silent, 2017
For my project, I focused on the theme of "marital coordination." I searched online for videos of couples running in sync at the same spot. I felt this simple, repetitive motion would make it easier to observe the subtle tensions in their interaction. To transcend individual personalities and cultural differences, and avoid the original context, I relied heavily on digital technology. First, I simplified the human outlines into simple black shapes, and extracted the couples' synchronized movements frame-by-frame from the online videos, preserving only the pure physical dynamics. Then, I used a computer to break down these simplified images into a series of still frames. For each frame, I drew colorful lines along the shared boundaries of the couple, curious to see what kind of vibrant blends would emerge from their shared movement in space. This digital processing allowed me to maintain a rational, objective observation and opened up new, unexpected possibilities.
Unlike Marina Abramović's emphasis on performative and dramatic effects, I used digital techniques to deconstruct and extract the physical actions, freeing them from the constraints of time and space, in an attempt to present the pure essence of the behavior itself. This way, the viewer is no longer limited to perceiving the action through a linear timeline and spatial environment, but can understand the essential characteristics of the behavior in a more abstract, dynamic way. Through this approach, I hope to explore the complexity and diversity inherent in the concept of "pure behavior." I believe the behavior itself holds profound significance, transcending its final performative presentation.
