“ALONGSEN T EN C E” is a yearlong work and exhibition in which the artist collages diverse texts from history, religion, politics, society, literature, and song lyrics, enabling the multiple voices within these texts to co-create a form of writing that decentralises the author. By removing strokes from characters and fragmenting sentences, the artist deconstructs previously closed and singular meanings, expanding the text’s significance and generating multiple possibilities. This process, akin to a game, grants the audience space for autonomous association, creation, and recombination, transforming the text from a stable, closed entity into a continuously flowing, open, and polysemous dynamic state.
A key element of the work is the performance within the exhibition space, where audience and even security personnel use megaphones to vocally project the text. The presence of security staff imbues the utterances with connotations of authority, order, and command, creating a striking contrast with the freely recited phrases of the audience. Through amplification, the text is vocalised, breaking down traditional boundaries between author and reader, and transforming the text from a unidirectional statement into a live performance. This vocalisation is not merely recitation but often takes on a poetic quality, emphasising rhythm, intonation, and emotional flow, thereby endowing the words with renewed vitality and tension. Simultaneously, computer-generated bilingual (Chinese and English) readings are broadcast through handheld megaphones and interwoven with video replays of previous audience performances on monitor. The entire space resembles a stage or laboratory, allowing different subjects and performers to collaboratively play with, explore, and express the diverse possibilities of language and meaning through visual and auditory forms.
