Candlelight !Dinner And Family Friends (pronounced /not dinner/) is a co-performance based on my genealogy map starting from my first memory of being creative to “today.”
Candlelight !Dinner And Family Friends (pronounced /not dinner/) is a co-performance based on my genealogy map starting from my first memory of being creative to “today.”
I had a candlelight !dinner with all my audience.
Under dim, warm light and the light scents of roses, the “family friends” used brushes to excavate “me” from a box of sand while the story of my life unfolds alongside meditative drone music.
I had a candlelight !dinner with all my audience.
Under dim, warm light and the light scents of roses, the “family friends” used brushes to excavate “me” from a box of sand while the story of my life unfolds alongside meditative drone music.
“…as the waxing gibbous moon spatters golden glitter onto this planet, you stared at the mirage of Lulu courtyard, listening to the tree’s stories…”
“…as the waxing gibbous moon spatters golden glitter onto this planet, you stared at the mirage of Lulu courtyard, listening to the tree’s stories…”
My creative journey as a complex, contingent, interconnected, and interlaced web.
In Foucault’s words, genealogy analysis is meant to (re)discover and (re)link the contingent events, pointing to the fact that any system of thinking, including the one in my brain, is the result of unforeseen turns of (personal) history and not rational, planned, sequential events. In a room filled with dim, warm light and drone music, I time-traveled to the far back, (re)lived events remaining in my memory, and noted each down on a sticky note. After that, I wrote a narrative poem telling the story of my life.
My creative journey as a complex, contingent, interconnected, and interlaced web.
In Foucault’s words, genealogy analysis is meant to (re)discover and (re)link the contingent events, pointing to the fact that any system of thinking, including the one in my brain, is the result of unforeseen turns of (personal) history and not rational, planned, sequential events. In a room filled with dim, warm light and drone music, I time-traveled to the far back, (re)lived events remaining in my memory, and noted each down on a sticky note. After that, I wrote a narrative poem telling the story of my life.
Read the full poem
I wrote the sticky notes and the entire poem with my non-dominant hand.
The muscle memories and mental express lanes that render (the action of) writing subconsciously are turned off when writing with my non-dominant hand. It felt like relearning writing (v.) and lettering — augmenting writing into drawing — and I could feel the haptic sensation of writing (the texture of the paper, the material of the pen) more. The somatic sensation of writing joined the visual and sonic experience during my ritualistic meditation and made it a full-body experience. I had to slow down… meaning that my thoughts could travel far…
I wrote the sticky notes and the entire poem with my non-dominant hand.
The muscle memories and mental express lanes that render (the action of) writing subconsciously are turned off when writing with my non-dominant hand. It felt like relearning writing (v.) and lettering — augmenting writing into drawing — and I could feel the haptic sensation of writing (the texture of the paper, the material of the pen) more. The somatic sensation of writing joined the visual and sonic experience during my ritualistic meditation and made it a full-body experience. I had to slow down… meaning that my thoughts could travel far…
The sticky notes were augmented into small foam blocks semantically linked with yarn, forming my extended portrait.
If an actual portrait documents my physical body formed under the instruction of DNA double helices shaped by contingent inheritance and mutations, this block-net portrait snapshots my emotional DNA influenced by contingent events in my waking life.
The sticky notes were augmented into small foam blocks semantically linked with yarn, forming my extended portrait.
If an actual portrait documents my physical body formed under the instruction of DNA double helices shaped by contingent inheritance and mutations, this block-net portrait snapshots my emotional DNA influenced by contingent events in my waking life.
I buried the block-net portrait in sand. Like John Baldessari’s Cremation Project, I announced the liberation from those haunting memories and the start of a new creative era — Waxing Gibbous Moon. But unlike the Cremation Project, burying the portrait concretized the excavation process for my participants. The sticky notes and block-net portrait, like Pollock paintings, are the documentation of my meditation experiences and learnings. Instead of relying only on this compressed time-lapse, I decided to bring partially the original “time” into the performance, inviting my audience on this slow meditation of (re)excavation.
I buried the block-net portrait in sand. Like John Baldessari’s Cremation Project, I announced the liberation from those haunting memories and the start of a new creative era — Waxing Gibbous Moon. But unlike the Cremation Project, burying the portrait concretized the excavation process for my participants. The sticky notes and block-net portrait, like Pollock paintings, are the documentation of my meditation experiences and learnings. Instead of relying only on this compressed time-lapse, I decided to bring partially the original “time” into the performance, inviting my audience on this slow meditation of (re)excavation.
“Not romantic? That’s almost deadly romantic!”
Romantic aesthetics is the dominant undertone of my visual and writing works. All my writings are basically love letters of different kinds — to a person or to a group, to concrete experiences or abstract concepts. The making of Candlelight !Dinner is a rewarding, calming, and self-actualizing journey. I got to (re)excavate, (re)live, and (re)link the buried building blocks that together shaped me. Realizing that some haunting memories and mistakes had shaping powers as powerful (if not more powerful) than the good, it was the first step of walking out of the “why it’s always me” paradox and start loving myself.
Candlelight !Dinner is a love letter for every participant of the performance who (re)lived the life with me.
“Not romantic? That’s almost deadly romantic!”
Romantic aesthetics is the dominant undertone of my visual and writing works. All my writings are basically love letters of different kinds — to a person or to a group, to concrete experiences or abstract concepts. The making of Candlelight !Dinner is a rewarding, calming, and self-actualizing journey. I got to (re)excavate, (re)live, and (re)link the buried building blocks that together shaped me. Realizing that some haunting memories and mistakes had shaping powers as powerful (if not more powerful) than the good, it was the first step of walking out of the “why it’s always me” paradox and start loving myself.
Candlelight !Dinner is a love letter for every participant of the performance who (re)lived the life with me.
Year
2025
Artistic Era
Waxing Gibbous Moon
Production Timeframe
Sep - Oct 2025
Medium
(Double) performance and mixed-media interactive environment, ink on paper, rose, ink on stickie notes, glass vase, water, foam board, yarn, superglue, sand, LED lamp, LED light strip, archaeology brushes, partition whiteboards
Sizes
Variable
Credit
*family dinner*
Tom Leeser
Susie Zhu
Hao Chen
Dongpu Ling
Molly Wurwand
HUANG Kai Qing
Abril Jiang
Yanqi He
Miles Zhu
Cody Perkins
©Copyright 2025 Sierra Zhang and Lonely Corridor Studio.
Year
2025
Artistic Era
Waxing Gibbous Moon
Production Timeframe
Sep - Oct 2025
Medium
(Double) performance and mixed-media interactive environment, ink on paper, rose, ink on stickie notes, glass vase, water, foam board, yarn, superglue, sand, LED lamp, LED light strip, archaeology brushes, partition whiteboards
Sizes
Variable
Credit
*family dinner*
Tom Leeser
Susie Zhu
Hao Chen
Dongpu Ling
Molly Wurwand
HUANG Kai Qing
Abril Jiang
Yanqi He
Miles Zhu
Cody Perkins
©Copyright 2025 Sierra Zhang and Lonely Corridor Studio.