Fact Residency: Tianzhuo Chen

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In all of his work, Tianzhuo Chen explores the connections between the physical limits of the human body and the potential, through performance, for emotional and spiritual transformation. Deeply influenced by his Tibetan Buddhist beliefs, in the context of his work this liminality manifests as a continuous dialogue between the mortal and the divine, a relationship which is brought to vivid life in the worlds Chen creates. In The Dust the ceremonial instruments used to establish these lines of communication between gods and humans are themselves elevated to protagonists, granted agency in the video work’s disembodied narrative, while in Trance gods and humans exist in the same aesthetic realm, moving to the same rhythm.

33EMYBW, Gabber Modus Operandi and City provide Chen with a melodic framework within which the artist can conduct this exploration, shedding light on the absurdity and disorder of human existence in order to reveal fundamental truths about our collective potential. In much the same way as prayer wheels and statues of Buddhist deities symbolise humankind’s connection to the divine in The Dust, in Trance bodies exist as conduits, vessels for the spirits of writers, philosophers and gods that are invoked by the artist as part of the ritualistic practice of the performance. This is what Antonin Artaud alludes to when he describes “a body which undergoes the world, and disgorges reality,” an entity capable of making it through the Sisyphean task of living in the physical world with the ability to speak of both life and death, as well as that which might exist in-between.

While these works might begin life as melodies that reverberate around the artist’s head, the end result is work of and for the body, art rituals in which all who participate, whether performer or spectator, experience physical and psychic transformation. The work of Tianzhuo Chen invokes the immanence of the body while gesturing towards its inherent potential to transcend past its physical limitations, envisaging a new kind of physicality, in a new kind of world.

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