Teatime With My New Love
“With regard to the censorship of China, we needed to talk about the protests in Hong Kong. In the Chinese state media, the term “cockroach” is used to speak about the protesters. It is an old technique to dehumanise people. So I fell in love with a cockroach during that time – on the rooftop of a skyscraper. They became part of my everyday life. The audience could sit down with me and have a cup of tea. I showed them my new love. Some were scared at first, but through my love they could transform their perception of the cockroach. Some of them even held the cockroach in their hands at the end. While playing with the cockroach, the audience and I could exchange thoughts about power structures, depressions, fears and the Hong Kong protests.”
Teatime with my new love is part of the vermin projects. In this project series, tobibienz researches in different settings and through different processes the stories and power structures behind the word “vermin” and the questions of power structures and layers that are defining the co-existence of critters in different shapes and forms (humans vs. non-humans, cockroaches, snails, …). In different processes tobibienz works with experts in philosophy, visual arts, digital arts, entomology, sound and performance.
Link:
Performance video
Title: Teatime With My New Love
Performer: tobibienz
Involved: Video by tobibienz, Editing by Duy Buy
Form: Performance, vermin projects
Duration: 3h
Venue: Ming Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai (China)
Date: November 2019
