Theater of the Unplaced / Conversations with my Inner Self and Ritual of Reconstruction’ Revival

pertains to three succinct, existentialist Japanese characters that by chance and good fortune, coincide and plumb their intimate creativities in a torrid New York summer performance space ready to sacrifice their exquisite salvation and survival poetic wares to the Taoist tools of Blind Fold maestro Jon Tsoi…who in turn, offers them to a delighted-in-waiting interactive audience ready to jump at and complete the works in this Ad-Hoc, laudable performance.
Maestro Fumiyoshi, who’s tenet “Shamisen saved my life…from a dull life as salary man”, accompanied by the incredible percussionist Rica at the Cajon, will provide stunning, otherworldly music to Tana Oshima’s unusual Video screening of her diasporic, assorted drawings that explore identity, art and language in relation to place and meaning, using Comics format as a medium allowing for the visual to incorporate linguistic properties. In unison, artist ‘Taka’ Matsumine, who after a near fatal skying accident was left only with the nerves and functions of his neck and above, proclaimed ‘I feel my senses are heightened, as the accident opened my mind and eyes to all that I now see, considering it a ‘perfect moment’, will be painting live—brush held by mouth—a large portrait inspired by the Shamisen sound combustions. The performance will conclude with maestro Fumiyoshi’s emulsifying sounds constructing a scaffold for Jon’s Tsoi’s reciting his Taoist thoughts for world peace, be it in Hong Kong, Fukushima Daiichi, Congo, Chernobyl, or El Paso, respectfully bringing down the curtain on a politically Summer of our Discontent in peace and harmony, concluding WhiteBox Harlem’s first accomplished Tri-Annual Summer Residency Performance Series.

Clouds Chasing the Moon

6th Blind Fold Summer Residency-Performance Series iteration.
Featuring performances by Jon Tsoi and Lin Bing.

A Painting At Rest Remains So

In its 5th Blind Fold Summer Residency-Performance Series iteration, painter Sei Smith hands over a full body sized paint skin to dancer Doménica Garcia. In turn, under full cover, she surreptitiously develops and enacts apersonal movement sketch as a foil to crawl-test, parse the limits of WhiteBoxFirehouse architectural space and sojourn its invisible audience. After completing an engaging, full round charismatic interactive performance around this livephantom congregation, the paint skin gets peeled off Ms Garcia’s body by members of the audience. Pulled apart, it gets stretched taught and is offered to blind-folded maestro Jon Tsoi’s sharp combat knife.
Tsoi gets this membrane vigorously cut up, then serves the shred to the public, who will, eyes shut, in a healing process using thin rope, methodically stitch back together all slashes encountered creating, with this blind ritual, a dynamic visual artwork collaboratively construed with the full four senses and consciousness, totally absent of vision.

Traveling Musical Water Fountains

Traveling Musical Water Fountains is a poetic and political collective installation piece creating a symbolic space allowing for the construction of rituals. Using as foil the concept of ‘water flowing’—from fountains into pools, pools mirroring the world encircling us—it showcases this essential life nurturing element as a fluid, indefatigable carver of trails making way for rivers, Earth’s arteries of life. 

The ‘fountain’ as a symbol of free flowing energy, paralleling our human circulatory system, evocative of our breathing mechanism and rhythm, harbors a safe place in us. 

AN ENCOUNTER

Artist Statement

To me, communication is accompanied  by interference and tension. While being an immigrant and living in between 3 different cultures I developed over years a substantial anxiety that communication implies. Will I be understood? Will I be able to fit in?

As a call to reclaim my body and my place I developed a persona that performs the actions of vulnerability,  intimacy and defiance. I perform the action of mundane but intimate daily routine by flossing my teeth. I wear the mask made out of soft unbaked clay that slowly gets distorted and scratched off my face. When I floss it eventually fells of. I attach it back together just to keep on going. Eventually these two actions of adapting and changing identities by reshaping my face and trying to sustain my routines by flossing my teeth creates monstrous, shapeless mass on my face.

Subvirtuality: An Electromagnetic March Against Time

Featuring performances by Jon Tsoi and Mark Bloch.

The Heart of the Matter

Featuring performances by Jon Tsoi and Shen Jindong.