ECHO TOURS: PARIS
performance (40 min), 2024, at UP-ON International Live Art Festival in A4 museum, Chengdu
Echo Tours is a guided walking “eco-tour” based on the premise that it is more green to fly one tour guide over to China than have all the audience members go to Paris. Echoing across space, time and language, the guide and the translator welcome the artsy crowd and set off on a brisk walk through the city’s main tourist attractions. The magic and splendour of Paris is evoked in the grounds of the A4 museum (standing in for both Centre Pompidou and the Louvre museum), by transposing iconic Parisian sites onto vaguely similar features of the European-inspired gated community of Luxetown, Chengdu. Paris, in this performance (or as one local resident was overheard calling it: scam), represents the unattainable dream of seizing a nostalgic and romantic mirage: seen from afar, the fantasy remains intact. This simulated tourist experience questions the existence of authenticity; like the Eiffel Tower keychain handed out at the end of the tour, it is but a simulacra of what has already been replaced.
Collaborator: Zoe Li Wenwen 李文雯 Graphic Design: Xiao Ruyun 肖如云 Photography: Ran Qizhuo 冉启卓, Hu Yujie 胡雨捷 Videography: Shui Yuntong 水运通, Ah Si 阿西 ꀊꑞ
With the support of Pro Helvetia Shanghai, Swiss Arts Council