The Microbial Dance Floor – Phase I (Zoom Performance)

The first phase of The Microbial Dance Floor was presented via Zoom—a choice shaped by my current condition as a freelance artist seeking to maximize opportunities to reconnect with my birthplace. At the time, I was also performing at the Venice Biennale for another Hong Kong artist, and this overlapping of roles, places, and screens became a conceptual foundation for the work.

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, minimizing, and maximizing 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 emphasized the porous boundaries between bodies, places, and time zones.

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