- Venue
- Centre for Chinese Conetemporary Art
- Location
- North West England
This likeable and amusing performance is to be enjoyed with caution. For all her levity, Chang is playing dangerously with several stereotypes of Chinese femininity and though she encourages participation from the audience, this too has to be approached with caution.
It starts innocently enough with Chang standing mute in the performance space, exuding an openness and friendliness that puts the audience at ease. Notices granting permission for mobile phones to be left on and freedom to cough, sneeze and shuffle anticipate a very different sort of performance.
As the audience settles and the room grows quiet, it becomes clear that Chang is listening very carefully and as the sound of traffic creeps into the quiet room, her body begins to react to it, very gently. Eventually, the audience grows bolder and begins to provide incidental sounds such as coughing, sneezing, jingling loose change in order to trigger more movement in Chang. We become complicit in her performance and the artists present, either briefed on Chang's performance or more willing to be explicit than the non-artists in the crowd, start to provide deliberate noises, singing, calling her name, jangling keys. More people join in and there is an extraordinary change in atmosphere when we collectively realise that without us providing the noises normally frowned upon in performance work, there would be no performance work at all in this case. Chang is our puppet and we can, we must, make her dance.
Chang's responses are humorous and spontaneous, changing in scale according to the sound provided. She is a confident and skilled performer and is able to inject wit and character into her movement but it is the constant reverting to coyness and coquettishness which is troubling. We are in control of Chang and Chang is willingly submissive, responding to whatever she hears with charm and openness. Apart from the initial notes granting permission for distractions, she does not do anything further to invite noises from the audience and can only wait for something to make a sound when the room goes quiet.
This is the level of her submission and it is impossible to escape the stereotype of the obedient Chinese / Thai bride so coveted by Western men for their assumed docility and responsive attentiveness at the sacrifice of their own comfort. The fulfilment of the performance is dependent on a complex contract made between the audience and Chang: between me and Chang, the contract is even more complex. As a British-born Chinese woman myself, I found the performance deeply discomforting, as if I had caught sight of myself smiling while subject to the whims of a braying crowd. The audience gleefully perpetuate the obedient Chinese woman stereotype by producing more sounds, literally making Chang dance at our command; the repugnance of this is smothered somewhat by the humour and wit of the situation but is something I will carry with me in my memory of this experience.
