新展预告 | 「迷乱祈文」Lou Lou Sainsbury, Raffia Li, 双人展

Imaginary Z很高兴带来Lou Lou Sainsbury 和 Raffia Li的双人展览 Invocations for Bewilderment「迷乱祈文」，该展览将于2022年11月12日在开幕，并将展出到2023年1月22日。 

本次展览由作品 descending notes 出发： 

descending notes（2022） 是由Lou Lou Sainsbury制作的一部迷情的科幻短片，探索了transness作为一种 共鸣 和 失调 的纠缠形式。从唐尼-海瑟薇（Donny Hathaway）歌曲 A Song for You 的深情演绎中获取灵感 — 其歌词被钢琴音符的不和谐/失调 所点缀： 

“If my words don’t come together, 

listen to the melody ‘cause my love is in there hiding. 

I love you in a place where there’s no space or time.” 

本片由艺术家Lou Lou Sainsbury, Ada M. Patterson和Raffia Li三人共同写作和出演，这是一部关于三个正在转形（transing）的生命，一个关于宇宙的爱情故事，他们展开的欲望跨越了时间和空间，从早期基督教圣徒的感性到未来的外星人式的亲密。在跨性别者的友谊和日常生活中，以自传式的温柔、团结和悲伤（grief）的经验出发；随着世界的分裂，这些秘密的生命隐秘地学习如何在转变之中生活，他们的呼吸穿越彼此。 

艺术家Raffia Li的作品则着重于对语言的身体性的关注，而这里的身体性不限于人类身体，而是在（不得不）以人类特定的身体形式存在时，如何邀请不确定的、另外的、缺席的语言进入这个身体内部，重新想象语言的边界和承装着它们的身体。在《untitled》中，影像的主角和场景是层叠而模糊的，随时发生和被打断，消融着固定的意义推演。TA感兴趣的是意义生成前/间-转化发生的模糊状态，和此间可能产生的对话与关联。 

《鸽子背后的鸽子2》属于《悬亭》系列，从邀请朋友/聋人创作者艳飞和白总用手语翻译TA的鸟类影像作品开始，在影像变成手语诗，又再回归影像的转译过程中，鸟类的步调、停顿、俯冲、凝视进驻他们——这些动作在他们身体间传递、伸展，他们彼此塑造，成为另外的，成为鸟；艳飞、白总、鸽子、Raffia的身体痕迹混杂在一起，个体身体在消解和凸显中闪烁着，发出着《庄周梦蝶》式的提问。自然从未在我们之外。我们该如何发现其他交流、相遇和存在的方式，如何记起梦的仪式，化物的自然？

来自艺术家作品陈述

由此延展开去，展览包括了多件来自两位艺术家的视频和诗歌作品，本次展览反思了二元的，正常的，殖民的帝国范式，用诗学重塑关系与意义的空间，是对身体，生命形式差异的 可能性的探索；是对主客体关系的僭越；是关于与大地/宇宙一起生成的祈文。

Imaginary Z is glad to present Invocations for Bewilderment, a duo exhibition with Lou Lou Sainsbury and Raffia Li, will open in Hangzhou on Nov. 12, 2022 and will be on view until Jan. 22, 2023.

The exhibition takes the work descending notes as a start point:

descending notes (2022) is an erotic science-fiction film by Lou Lou Sainsbury, exploring transness as a form of resonance and dissonance. It takes inspiration from Donny Hathaway’s heartfelt rendition of A Song for You, whose lyrics are punctuated by a discordant progression of piano notes: 

“If my words don’t come together, 

listen to the melody ‘cause my love is in there hiding. 

I love you in a place where there’s no space or time.” 

Written and performed with Ada M. Patterson and Raffia Li, the film is a cosmic love story between three transing beings whose desire unfolds across time and space, from the sensuality of early Christian sainthoods to future alien intimacies. Grounded in autobiographical experiences of tenderness, solidarity and grief within transgender friendships and everyday life; as the world splits apart, these undercover beings covertly learn to live in transformation and to give each other breath.

Raffia Li’s works focus on the bodily nature of languages. The “bodily” here is not limited to the human body, but how uncertain, otherwise, absent body of languages could be invited inside when (having to) exist in the form of a specific human body, and how to reimagine the borders of languages and their carriers. In Untitled, the protagonists and scenes of the images and dialogues are layered and blurred, occurring and being interrupted at any time, dissolving the fixed derivation of meanings. TA is interested in the ambiguous state pre-/inter meaning-making in which transformations happen, where dialogues and relations that may arise in between. 

The Pigeon behind A Pigeon 2 is part of Raffia’s Hovering series. It begins with inviting friends/Deaf collaborators Yanfei and Baizong to interpret video works about birds into sign language. In this process of interpreting from image to sign language poetry and back to image, the bird's steps, pauses, dives, gazes enter them - with these movements passing and stretching between their bodies, they shape each other, becoming otherwise, becoming birds; the bodily traces of Yanfei, Baizong, the pigeon, and Raffia merge together - individual bodies shimmer in dissolution and accentuation, asking questions like Zhuangzi’s Dream of the butterfly. Nature is never outside of us. How do we discover other ways of communicating, encountering and being? Would we recall the ritual of dreams, the nature of transformation?

from artists' statements

The exhibition then develops and expands, with several video works and peoms from both artists, reflecting on dualistic, clonial, empirial paradigms of the norm, reshaping the space of relationships and space of meanings with poetics, exploring the posibilities of bodies and differences of forms-of-life. It is an arrogation of subject/object relation, it is an active invocation becoming-with the land/cosmic.

______

Invocations for Bewilderment

迷乱祈文

展览日期 ：2022年11月12日至2023年1月22日

每日11：30 至 18:00（周一闭馆）

本次展览将分成A-B面两部分 进行展出：

A面展出时间：2022年11月12日到2022年12月11日

B面展出时间：2022年12月12日到2023年1月22日

（展出作品将会发生改变，AB面的转换呼应本次展览transing的主题）

地址：杭州市上城区万松岭路90号 Imaginary Z

票价：30元, 双人票：50

现场购票, 每人附赠店内任意饮品一份

以下为A面作品简介（B面敬请期待）：

descending notes trailer, 此预告片为未调色版，将展出正式调色版

鸽子背面的鸽子2, The Pigeon behind A Pigeon 2 

video, 2 min 59 secs, 2022, in 悬 亭 video and sign language poetry series with Yanfei Li, and Baizong , in Zhongshan, Huizhou, China, and Rotterdam, Netherlands

untitled, 关于观看、⻦、椅子、扭曲(?)和 随机性、语言生成

descending notes, Lou Lou Sainsbury, 2022. 4K video. With Ada M. Patterson & Raffia Li. Commissioned and produced by Gasworks.

以下为部分诗歌（不做翻译）与手绘作品：

From Lou Lou Sainsbury:

descending notes

descending notes like rain in the abyss and baby, I know this voice contains so much that we can’t even hear but you bring me to that place, where rain falls and skin falls and the body falls and here we are in the puddle of it. I’m hearing that sound you make when you tell me that love could break gravity, could break the sun, could break time, and you know my love I can hear the ocean’s crash in my hollow shell. Those words that leak out into descending, descending, that break of the voice that tells me there’s so much more going on here, that the sound could only be the place. The place that holds our whispers, your feathers that broke my heart and made me die again and live for it.

Double Consciousness

This body might be an unforgiving home 

But it is also the weather, drifting cloud accumulation, 

Sun dried mist, brittle, facial watery dew, body moved. 

This is the last time I use the word Body. 

Resonance swallows mist reaching my open tongue, 

Of the ocean through your sweat, 

Drops speaking louder than the weight of words, 

Glossalalic gesture, glossolalic touch. 

Weather screams louder, 

That intersubjective expanse, 

Dysphoric vessels shake the stream, 

The most sorry I had been was when I failed to recognise home. 

I is noted twice in the last sentance (sentanced to be a self) 

Offhandedly in atmospheric conditions, 

A crack emerges, splits the center, 

Curses the time of the center, curses the hold of it. 

Pain is passed across as water is carried from ocean’s breathe 

Through this waiting room, a strike, a look, 

A hand in the crevasse of this chest, 

Wrenched open, it appears - 

          Bird song. 

          A wet fish. 

Smack the ribs.

pseudomorphic until not

to melt away, 

inside out, on the edge of glistening. 

eyelids shimmering, deepening into the fold, 

deep in my heart, to melt thighs, passing 

through skin, with tears, 

visible, invisibly porous, 

pseudomorphic until not, 

to melt with a skin, this loosened, 

swelling down, your touch 

only gets us wetter.

From Raffia Li:

At the ending bed we learn to breath through each other

1

就像  有一个开始  但没有

就像   形不成的字

        没有停歇的

          the words don’t form

                        stopforming

I don’t care about the smoothity

                  or accuracy of a you

                                          a we

The day happens a million years ago

             still waiting for the strike

as if we would hear

                            all over again

as If we haven’t been waiting

                                   searching

                                   dropping

                                   shadowing

picking a note for a me

                             a you

                             a TA

I know, baby.

I don’t always but I know baby.

The tears are descending too

                            sending

slightly messy but gentle

not hot or cold

                              not in

              tongues

                      not behind walls

                             or eyebrows.

2

As if

As if I know

the thing we call skin sink into a shell home

then I would lift you become you till you

don’t fear a new flowing fold

There’s no future never a future

but there’s a sinking love shaping

everything in there’s no no outside

anymore, love we don’t call outside

                                              out stop!

InyouIinyouIInyouI

                               sink

to ending

    looping

                             edges

we call home

in you in you in you I

call a shell wow chaos

      a shell mouth

                 mountaininging

                                          love

inyouinyou I

                     start to form

                                  with end

                   I start from

                                   the end.

            all over you

                                      again

At the ending bed

                  we learn to breath

    through each other

                              toooooooooooo

still counting the zeros

As if it is real as if we already knew.

at Loulou’s house

with Loulou and Ada by my side 

May 2nd, 2022

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艺术家简介：

Artists Bio:

Lou Lou Sainsbury（她/他们）是一位跨性别艺术家、电影制作人和写作者，居住在英国马盖特和荷兰鹿特丹，其艺术实践包括电影和现场表演、诗歌和绘画、装置和纺织物。她认为自己是一位时间的穿越者，她的作品将生命的历史改写成神话般的梦境，受到酷儿和生态主义的影响。她在声音思维的指导下，通过即兴表演、集体研究、材料探索和镜头语言，经常以合作的方式进行长期的以研究为导向的创作。

Lou Lou的作品探索我们如何能够成为更好的听众，以及身体（包括人类和超越人类的）如何能够扰乱历史与地理，经常在科幻小说和哥特恐怖片的领域书写 粘稠的，跨性别的，不可能的世界。最近，她的作品描绘了一个由洞、吸血鬼、外星人、音乐性、impossible births、神秘主义、物种间的转变、渗出的身体和裂开的文字，被穿插在既非二元论也非乌托邦的诡异寓言中。

Lou Lou于2021年毕业于荷兰艺术学院的艺术实践硕士，并随后获得了Freelands Gasworks合作项目。此前，她在2016年在布莱顿大学完成了她的移动影像学士学位后，于2017年成为 Open School East 的associate artist。自2018年以来，她一直是Croydon的Conditions studio项目的合作伙伴。

Lou Lou Sainsbury (she/they) is a trans artist, filmmaker and writer based in Margate, UK & Rotterdam, NL, working across film and live performance, poetry and drawing, installation and textiles. She identifies as a time traveller, making things that unwrite histories of living beings into mythopoeic dreamscapes, informed by queer & ecological activisms. She often works in collaboration and develops long-term research-led projects through improvisation, collective study, material exploration and cinematic processes, guided by sonic thinking. 

Lou Lou’s work questions how we can become better listeners, and how bodies (both human & more-than-human) can trouble historicity and geography, often writing slippery, trans narratives for impossible worlds in the realm of science-fiction and gothic horror. Recently her work maps a constellation of holes, vampires, aliens, musicality, impossible births, mysticism, interspecies transformation, bodies that seep out, and words that crack open, threaded into tricksterish fables that are neither dystopic or utopic. 

Lou Lou graduated from the MA in Art Praxis at the Dutch Art Institute in 2021, and was subsequently awarded the Freelands Gasworks Partnership Programme. Previously she was an associate artist at Open School East in 2017, after completing her BA in Moving Image at the University of Brighton in 2016. Since 2018, she has been an associate of Conditions studio programme in Croydon.

Raffia Li (TA/她们/她)的学习/研究和创作围绕着相互依存的、残障的、人格解体的身体，道家的身体观，自然的身体与语言，并感知它们在定义或解析之外的复杂性。

在她们的作品中，词语打开-成为行动，语言生长-是现场/游乐场，找符号之下的缝隙/门，连结与对话的空间不止发生于意义产生后，而是在意义生成前的模糊状态中不断形成、融化与纠缠。 

这些作品有时是表演、录像、或是视觉诗或写作，是一种缓慢的对话，和成为液态的预演，用诗来对抗规范主义、健全中心主义、身份政治，从而重塑关系和意义的空间。 

诗歌，被压迫者剧场，《庄子》，在中国、泰国、印度尼西亚和印度的等地进行的皮影仪式的田野研究，在手语艺术小组言语之形的经历、在胡同和街道上的表演/行动，她们发起并运营的迷你影戏节，和朋友的交换日记/信件，在荷兰艺术学院的艺术硕士学习，对梦境的观察，姥姥（芹）院子附近的河……这些都很深地影响了她们的艺术实践。

Raffia Li (TA/they/she) studies/works with the interdependent body in relations, the disabled body, Taoist view of body, the depersoned body, body and language “as it is“(自然的), and their complexity to be felt and moving with, other than defined or analyzed. 

In their work, words open as actions/rituals and languages grow as sites/playgrounds, to sense the gaps/gates under the signs, and nurture/hold the relational and dialogical spaces between meanings or meaning-making to come into shapes, melt and entangle. 

These works could take the form of a performance, video, visual poem or writing, in the process of slow dialoguing, rehearsing for formations of fluid space, developing a poetics that antagonizes normalism, ableism, identity politics, and remake the space of relationships, the space of meanings. 

Their art practice is deeply influenced by poetry, theatre of the oppressed, reading of Zhuangzi, their field research over Asian shadow puppetry and its rituals around China, in Thailand, Indonesia and India,, their learning experience of being in a sign language art collective Shape of Language & their actions in the hutong(胡同)s and streets,  running a community art festival Mini Shadowplay Festival, diary/letter exchanges with friends, their MA study at Dutch Art Institute, observations of their dreaming state, and the river near Grandma 芹’s yard.

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Imaginary Z是一个僭越时空的怪物/ a shapeshifting monster，它的触角与多种不断拓展四散的语义形成装配 — 去殖民/ decolonial，反法西斯/ anti-fascist，差异/ differences，交叉性/ intersectional，女权/ feminist， 酷儿/ queering… 并且它以一种更加丰富，更加能动，更加强大，更加肯定，更加美丽的姿态进行活动。

展览，工作坊/讲座，艺术教育etc...

杭州市上城区万松岭路90号 

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