https://phoebelinelnan.com phoebelinelnan.com Thu, 21 Nov 2024 15:33:07 +0000 https://phoebelinelnan.com en https://phoebelinelnan.com/header-photo-mix Sun, 04 Mar 2018 18:32:27 +0000 phoebelinelnan.com https://phoebelinelnan.com/header-photo-mix scroll down ︎︎︎ https://phoebelinelnan.com/Echo-tours-Paris Thu, 21 Nov 2024 15:33:07 +0000 phoebelinelnan.com https://phoebelinelnan.com/Echo-tours-Paris 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. In this performance (or as one local resident was overheard calling it: scam), Paris 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   https://phoebelinelnan.com/Aphrodisiacs-updated Thu, 21 Nov 2024 15:32:57 +0000 phoebelinelnan.com https://phoebelinelnan.com/Aphrodisiacs-updated APHRODISIACS UPDATED a slow dating event hosted during the exhibition 𝙄𝙣 𝙇𝙤𝙫𝙚 ;* curated by Paloma Ayala and tracy september at Les Complices*, Zürich, 2024.This slow dating event was based on Audre Lorde expanded definition of the erotic – a life force that can animate every aspect of our lives by putting us in contact with the untapped energy that comes from a bodily awareness of our capacity for joy, that lets us lead fuller and richer lives by connecting with our own joy and sharing that emotion with others. A South East Asian meal of vegan rendang was served, together with tumeric rice and Nonya achar, a labour of love that is not just mine. It was infused with the care that I put into cooking it and steeped with the tweaks and the tips that have traversed the webs of relationships that connect these recipes to their associated memories of taste. Guiding questions and prompts about food, sex, relationships, desire, empowerment, etc were placed on the table to help lubricate conversation, and diners were invited to trust themselves and each other, to expose themselves, to be vulnerable, in order to make a connection with the fellow humans at their table. Photos: Kay Zhang https://phoebelinelnan.com/Help-Yourself Fri, 24 Nov 2023 17:25:41 +0000 phoebelinelnan.com https://phoebelinelnan.com/Help-Yourself HELP YOURSELFperformance (13 min) and installation, 2023, at Gulp an exhibition curated by Clara Chavan and Katia Leonelli at La Rada, Locarno.  Help Yourself is a performance that features a hungry character pedalling through a rhythmic training program. Guided by the music and an automated voice, the character cycles while repeating affirmations that mix maxims of self help and motivational slogans, eyes fixed all the while on a slice of cake suspended in front of them. A crescendo, the character is told to reach for their goals and duly attempts to grab the cake. They pull on it and release a flurry of cash that they dive to devour. The performance ends with the character panting on the floor after having gorged themselves on money. Sound design: Louis Dambrain Cake engineering: Fig Docher Outside eyes: Jonas Van, Gemma Ushengewe, Orfeo Aurora Lili, Basile Collet, Fig Docher, Louis Dambrain Photos: Riccardo Giancola   https://phoebelinelnan.com/Breaking-news Sat, 08 Oct 2022 11:41:21 +0000 phoebelinelnan.com https://phoebelinelnan.com/Breaking-news BREAKING NEWS video (13 min) and installation, shown at Grad Show HEAD–Genève, 2022, foodculture days’ biennale, Vevey, 2023, 798 Cube, Beijing, 2024 Breaking News is a video based on an investigation into greenwashed contemporary land grabbing for sugar and bioethanol production in Cambodia and Brazil. It investigates how the links between agro- and petrochemical industries are sustained by an internalised belief in a nature-society divide and an adherence to the fictive value of money. Situated at the intersection between social and environmental justice, the economic and juridic aspects of commodification and desire-making are seen and unseen from a decolonial perspective through the transmutability of Green. Collaborators: Gabriel Shields-Hanau, Sawsane Hema, Gemma Ushengewe, Fig Docher, Louis Dambrain, RuYun Xiao, Mikhail Rokhjov https://phoebelinelnan.com/sweetness-sweetens Tue, 28 May 2024 15:24:18 +0000 phoebelinelnan.com https://phoebelinelnan.com/sweetness-sweetens SWEETNESS SWEETENS  Masters thesis, 2022 CCC - Visual Arts, HEAD Geneva Supervised by Gene Ray My masters thesis about sugar and sweetness weaves a thread between land grabs for contemporary sugar cane production in Cambodia and Brazil (for sugar and bioethanol respectively) that are greenwashed by sustainability certification company Bonsucro. Zooming out from these specific cases to understand how they are entangled in a profit-driven system led by agro- and petrochemical industries, it exposes mechanisms of capitalist commodification such as the financialisation of food and land. Interspersed with poetic texts and fictional scenarios reflect on my own position in the macropolitics of food, I conclude with a wariness of green ‘solutions’ that do not question the colonial roots of the climate crisis, which are therefore much more likely to be vaunted and instrumentalised in a turn towards ecofascism.    https://phoebelinelnan.com/WE-LOVE-GREEN Sat, 08 Oct 2022 11:41:13 +0000 phoebelinelnan.com https://phoebelinelnan.com/WE-LOVE-GREEN WE <3 GREEN performative reading, 2022 A 20 minute dramatic reading of work-in-progress screenplay WE <3 GREEN. The script weaves in numerous characters each engaing in some way with Product X, in its financing, production, marketing or consumption. The greenwashing of Product X is rendered visible by green glasses that the characters put on in order to see only what they want to see, or ignore that which they don’t want to know. The script is rooted in an investigation of sugar and the ways in which the making of taste is based on opposition to a certain class and/or race, exploitative production chains and unequal distribution (of wealth, power, food) - simultaneously camouflaged and fuelled by sweetness. Collaborator: Gabriel Shields-Hanau https://phoebelinelnan.com/THE-BAKER-AND-THE-BARONESS Mon, 20 Sep 2021 12:19:47 +0000 phoebelinelnan.com https://phoebelinelnan.com/THE-BAKER-AND-THE-BARONESS THE BAKER AND THE BARONESSgustative performance, 2021 The Baker and the Baroness is a gustative performance which tells the tale of the Baker from SAD BREAD (2021), as introduced to us by his new employer - the Baroness. The audience is invited to dine with her at a feast in which each course consists of progressively larger cakes. The Baker is by now a sugar addict who sees no meaning in his life that consists entirely of making sweets for the Baroness. Suicidal but unable to act, he procrastinates by hiding notes in the cakes that he bakes for the Baroness and her guests. During this performance, the Baroness reads out suicide note #32 aloud to her guests, in which the Baker recounts how he acquired taste and how taste now holds him hostage. Collaborators: Gabriel Shields-Hanau, Josephine Devaud, Daniela Gutierrez-Gonzalez Photos: Fig Docher https://phoebelinelnan.com/SAD-BREAD Mon, 20 Sep 2021 12:19:58 +0000 phoebelinelnan.com https://phoebelinelnan.com/SAD-BREAD SAD BREAD Self published micro-edition, 2021 republished by Escalier, 2022 Dramatic reading and lecture performance (20 min) This is the tiny tale of the Baker who makes Sad Bread. His story starts when he is sprayed with tear gas and from then on cannot stop crying. He starts working with a popular movement for whom he bakes their sustanance of resistance. The bread he bakes is salted by his tears, and is used to pass hidden messages hidden the buns that feed the Resistance. He must eventually return to his native island, where his bread becomes a commercial tourist attraction. His quest for meaning is put on hold until ask he receives an anonymous message that is also addressed to the readers: Who are you feeding? What are you feeding them? The dramatic reading of this short story was followed by a mini-conference on the different roles in society that together make up an 'alphabet soup'. https://phoebelinelnan.com/PHONE-BOX Sun, 04 Mar 2018 18:32:27 +0000 phoebelinelnan.com https://phoebelinelnan.com/PHONE-BOX PHONE BOX (OSLO 2017) Cue two strangers. They have a telephone conversation - anonymous, nameless, faceless. One of them speaks of recent deaths in her family, the other commiserates and talks about the healing process of communal grieving. They have never met, nor are they likely to. Phone Box was an interactive performance work in which several one-to-one conversations took place over several days in Oslo. Participants were invited to step into the phone box and pick up the phone, where a Stranger was waiting on the other end of the line to speak with them. The Strangers would then open with a personal story before asking the Participants questions to engage them in conversation. THE STRANGERS:Y talks about a traumatic experience in which a girl she was partying with died of a drug overdose and how her perception of time was altered. K reflects on how language has shaped his awareness of gender and reveals others’ changing perception of him as a transgender person. D talks about the death of her grandfather and the conflict she feels between the community-based life he lead and her own more individualistic pursuits. M recounts the public shaming of her friend who fell pregnant and was expelled for it, then muses over different forms social control. L talks about bullying she endured in school, how it affected the way she saw herself and how her art education later helped her come to terms with herself.