Suspicious Stain
The first artistic component of Qiong Zhang’s doctoral research project ‘Tracing Ghost Hallucinations in a World of Technological Surveillance’.
Why do we escape? What are we fleeing from? How do we disengage from internalized surveillance?
“Suspicious Stain” is a performance that traces the bodily histories of women who grew up in China and are now based in various European countries, including Finland and Germany. It reflects on their perpetual flight from suspect identities: as Chinese citizens, women, ‘blood packages’, costs of rapid development, ‘huminerals’ (human minerals), patriarchal patches, and colonial fantasies. This work explores the constant diasporic state embodied by these women, focusing on internalized surveillance, bodily colonization, and extractive capitalism’s impact on the female body in a post-colonial context.
The work opens a dialogue on embodied shame, fears, and trauma carried by women who kept escaping with no nostalgia. It invites both participants and audiences on a journey of escape and disengagement, unfolding through constant hesitation and disorientation.
“Suspicious Stain” is the artistic component of Qiong Zhang’s doctoral research project ‘Tracing Ghost Hallucinations in a World of Technological Surveillance’, with questions of how national identity might be constructed through individual and collective fantasies and imagination? How the concepts of surveillance being imagined and practiced within people’s everyday life ideologically and politically?
Working group
- Direction and dramaturgy: Qiong Zhang
- Performer:
- Christy Ma (guest)
- Qiong Zhang
- Xiaole Wang (MA in Live Art and Performance Studies)
- Yumo Cheng (guest)
- Sound design: Johanna Sulalampi
- Light design: David Brabec
- Costume support: Alena Tereshko (MFA in Time and Space art)
- Producer: Nina Numminen
- Contributing artists: Christy Ma, Johanna Sulalampi, Jing Xie, Xiaole Wang, Yumo Cheng, Qiong Zhang
Supported by: Finnish Cultural Foundation, Performing Arts Research Center Tutke in Theater Academy, Uniarts Helsinki.
Please note that half of the seats available are for chairs and half for pillows on the floor.
Please note that the matinee performance on Nov 6th at 15.00 will videorecorded for the research purposes. The recording is only used by the examiner of the research so it is not publicly available anywhere.
Why do we escape? What are we fleeing from? How do we disengage from internalized surveillance?
“Suspicious Stain” is a performance that traces the bodily histories of women who grew up in China and are now based in various European countries, including Finland and Germany. It reflects on their perpetual flight from suspect identities: as Chinese citizens, women, ‘blood packages’, costs of rapid development, ‘huminerals’ (human minerals), patriarchal patches, and colonial fantasies. This work explores the constant diasporic state embodied by these women, focusing on internalized surveillance, bodily colonization, and extractive capitalism’s impact on the female body in a post-colonial context.
The work opens a dialogue on embodied shame, fears, and trauma carried by women who kept escaping with no nostalgia. It invites both participants and audiences on a journey of escape and disengagement, unfolding through constant hesitation and disorientation.
“Suspicious Stain” is the artistic component of Qiong Zhang’s doctoral research project ‘Tracing Ghost Hallucinations in a World of Technological Surveillance’, with questions of how national identity might be constructed through individual and collective fantasies and imagination? How the concepts of surveillance being imagined and practiced within people’s everyday life ideologically and politically?
Working group
- Direction and dramaturgy: Qiong Zhang
- Performer:
- Christy Ma (guest)
- Qiong Zhang
- Xiaole Wang (MA in Live Art and Performance Studies)
- Yumo Cheng (guest)
- Sound design: Johanna Sulalampi
- Light design: David Brabec
- Costume support: Alena Tereshko (MFA in Time and Space art)
- Producer: Nina Numminen
- Contributing artists: Christy Ma, Johanna Sulalampi, Jing Xie, Xiaole Wang, Yumo Cheng, Qiong Zhang
Supported by: Finnish Cultural Foundation, Performing Arts Research Center Tutke in Theater Academy, Uniarts Helsinki.
Please note that half of the seats available are for chairs and half for pillows on the floor.
Please note that the matinee performance on Nov 6th at 15.00 will videorecorded for the research purposes. The recording is only used by the examiner of the research so it is not publicly available anywhere.