The Microbial Dance Floor – (Zoom Performance) 2024

The first phase of The Microbial Dance Floor was presented as an initial idea on the WestK platform “First Creation”. At the time, I was also performing at the Venice Biennale for another Hong Kong artist, but Shaped by my current condition as a freelance artist, full-time mother based in Berlin, seeking to maximize opportunities to reconnect with my birthplace, Hong Kong. I’m thrilled to be selected, but as I couldn’t be in the same time in two places, this overlapping of roles, places, became the conceptual foundation for the presentation of this idea.

Knowing the presentation would exist in a digital format, I embraced the screen itself as both stage and research surface. I developed a choreography of gestures using browser windows: gliding, minimising, and maximising layers of video, maps, forests, underwater footage, and magnified microbes. My own image was at times obscured by a fake plant, enacting a form of visual concealment and ecological entanglement.

The performance culminated in a quiet domestic reveal—I stood up, walked into the kitchen, cut an apple, and left the screen running. Simultaneously, in Hong Kong, a live performer invited the audience to step out onto the balcony and encounter the microbial world for themselves. This cross-geographical co-presence emphasised the porous boundaries between bodies, places, and time zones.

I am deeply grateful to the Dance Team at WestK for their openness and generous technical support, which made this hybrid, multilayered performance possible.