Wall duet 2024

09 May 2024 : Bengal Art Program, Dhaka, Bangladesh

For the second performance day at ART IS EVERYWHERE, Live Art Tour 9, we moved to the 4th floor of the Bengal Art Foundation, an open unfinished concrete area.

We were asked to select an area of the site to perform in. This time I had no performance concept to start with, and decided I would not bring any materials and to use the existing site. I investigated the site. Standing before the brick wall, a screen to the elevator lobby, it had two vertical shafts only about 24cm wide. I decided to just squeeze into that space as a statement about body and architecture. My plan was to remain static, not moving, wedged into the wall. Cai Qing saw me looking at the wall and said let’s do it together. He read my mind or had the same thought. So we performed together, wearing only rolled-up trousers, with no top or shoes.

We walked to the wall and turned sideways to squeeze into the cavity. Inside I could not see either side, so I could not see the public. I had planned to remain in place during all the other performances for about 2 hours, but Cai Qing stated he would need to leave and return as he was the curator and needed to see the other performances. I felt this weakened the impact of the image: two men trapped inside a wall. As it was, I remained in place for 20 minutes until all the audience had moved to witness the next performance. During this time I discovered that Cai Qing and left and returned several times. In fact I became quite uncomfortable and claustrophobic wedged betwen those bricks. The image arose of workers trapped in the construction site. Cai Qing called the work “The Gap”, acknowledging that he walked in and out of the cracks several times, giving instructions for the next performance or taking photos of the scene. Twenty minutes later, the two artists could be seen shirtless among the audience.

At first it was a statement about body and site, but standing in there I was under pressure and it was claustrophobic. I thought of the rural workers who come to big cities to work on construction sites. In developing countries this is dangerous work and some people die on the job, perhaps they are buried forever beneath the concrete, or sealed inside a wall. The other interpretation of course could be people murdered by a cartel and the evidence dumped on a building site.