when the corner curves to the elbow (2023)

performance

I deliver my body honestly to you
A stiff hesitant flesh, with many knots
Like the swollen feet of the 17th century,
that suffering the indignity from the incompatibility with the other land.
Isn’t it your wicked intelligence?
You missionize to the world your pervasive restorative power.

I leave my body briefly, entangled with dreams
what flabby and heavy flesh.
from which damp heat and festering fluids are revealed.
sweat, oil, dead skin, vapour, smoke, dirt, pimples, spittle. They are joyfully invited out, mixed, as evidence, witness the transformation, as the trophy of purifying.

In a room, you tell me that I don't have to concentrate or obsess the principles of everything.
I especially need to be distracted, roaming, eyes half-open. because all matters will

elbows folding to become the corners of the room.
and the room curling up into a cloud of hair.
The spine collapsing, being taken away its central, and scattering around the pillows, the intestines diving beneath the floor, digesting the burnt leaves
Thriving and growing, climbing the entire wall.
And all the holes in the body that
Diffusing a serious, bitter smog and fragrance.

A chanting walk through the audience and provides the moxibustion(* )for the space, spreading its restorative power for the incompatible/sick/abandoned bodies that embodying the systematic problems. Part of the research presentation(moxibustion is a treatment burning the dried mugwort and heat the points on body)

In 17 century after witnessing the moxibustion curing the insanity* on an enslaved girl*, Herman Busschof the VoC missionary decided to try moxibustion for the disease gout on his feet, which he got on Batavia* and get recovered. While the curiosity and desire for conquest would produce violence. The moxibustion was noted in the book by Herman as an “alternative “ for European medicine system, then introduced to Europe.(*these words according the historical context or from the records)

The gout as a ghost to revenge the destructive involvement of colonization while the indigenous therapy became an inverted missionizing, by its inclusive and trans-regional vitality.

When I investigated my own migration, the moxibustion is my family practice and I bring it with my moving to the Netherlands, to relieve my somatization discomfort. It is a reflection of the pattern shaped by the hierarchy from the past order.