Mei Liu
FilmMei Liu is an interdisciplinary artist from Shanghai with a background in documentary filmmaking and artistic research. Her practice approaches worldbuilding through performance, workshops, collective gatherings and film. Her work is process-driven, polyphonic and communal, considering the body as a site where the spiritual and political intersect. Guided by questions such as “what is freedom?” and “what makes us human?”, she draws from methods including lucid dreaming, oral history, improvisation and live performance. Through these approaches, she brings forward erased histories, silenced voices and other ghosts from invisible realms, giving space to what has been repressed, rejected or forgotten.
My Body is a Resonance Chamber is a live performance and installation, created from a dream that the artist had of her swallowing an SD memory card. The memories inside the card start bubbling up in her body, slowing taking host. Narratives from historical accounts and first hand encounters are weaved together to draw out the body’s subterranean memories. In the work, bodies become slowly possessed and contaminated by histories and by technologies. The floor installation gradually shakes the performer’s body out of control, as live saxophone breathes for the audience.
Credits
Concept, writing and direction: Mei Liu, Music composition and co-performer: Cavid Dhen, Producer: Mei Liu, Helen Tsang
Special thanks: Malaz Usta, Mei Xinyi, Jia Yue Ding