In many ways, Trance is the culmination of all of Tianzhuo Chen’s work thus far, drawing together the varied and multitudinous aspects of the artist’s wide-ranging practice. Stretching across 12 continuous hours and featuring a sprawling cast, Trance brings together a collection of amateur and professional performers that spend every minute in character, eating, resting and even going to the bathroom amidst the sculptures, sand and raw clay of Chen’s stage. A musical ensemble that includes Dis Fig, Ican Harem of Gabber Modus Operandi, whose stunning track ‘Trance Adiluhunxx’ scores the above short film, ¥ØU$UK€ ¥UK1MAT$U, Felix-Florian Todtloff and City act as guides for the gathered audience, who over time are invited to participate in the performance ritual, merging with those on stage in a rapturous climactic celebration.
Inspired both by Antonin Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty and traditional Tibetan Buddhist ceremonies, Trance is a sustained and focused investigation into physicality and the corporeal limits of the body, as well a space for those who participate in the performance to approach literal trance states, instances of intense psychic liberation that allow for a return to a primitive connection with the material world. During the course of the performance the movements of those on stage are captured and played back to the audience in slow-motion, enabling highly detailed studies of physical movement. The extreme duration of the performance is also accentuated by the lysergic set dressing, as the fresh flowers, vegetation and wet clay that make up the stage at the start of the performance eventually wilt, rot and crack over time, a process of entropy that mirrors the somatic and mental transformations experienced by participants in the piece.
Trance was premiered back in 2019 at Beijing’s M. Woods Gallery, taking place over three iterations on three consecutive days. The narrative of each performance unfolds in two-hour cycles and is split over six chapters, each drawing on a wild variety of texts and artworks dealing with various conceptions of death and apocalypse. Starting with a meditation on a series of Japanese paintings from the 14th century depicting the nine phases of death according to the Mahayana sutras, the performance moves through phases inspired by Susan Sontag’s 1967 novel Death Kit, William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience, a hip-hop adaptation of lines taken from Delog: Journey to Realms Beyond Death, a key Buddhist text from Delog Dawa Drolma, as well as a sequence of movement responding to the paranoid letters sent by Antonin Artaud during his mysterious trip to Ireland in 1937, when he set off to chase terrible revelations about the end of the world which he believed to be fast approaching.
The European premiere of Trance will take place at Hamburg’s Kampnagel performing arts theatre on July 11, 12 and 13. For more information about the show visit the Kampnagel website.
For more information about Tianzhuo Chen and his work you can visit his website and follow him on Instagram.
Trance Credits:
Director – Tianzhuo Chen
Dramaturgy – Petra Poelzl
Choreography – Ylva Falk
Performance & Music – Bidjé de Rosa, Ican Harem, Khng Khan, Lavinia Vago, Lisette Ros, Ndoho Ange, Omid Tabari, Siko Setyanto, Ylva Falk, City, Dis Fig, Felix-Florian Todtloff, ¥ØU$UK€ ¥UK1MAT$U
Production Management – Partner In Crime
Costume – Windowsen, Yusuke Washimi
Light – Akihiko Tanida
Sound – Sho Moriyama
Studio Management & Assistance – Ren Xingxing, Xiao Xiaxi
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