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another person’s head, touching the feet of the master, and the biblical tradition of washing a guest’s feet, there are so many cultural references. Precedents include the work of artists who, through use of relics and remnants, darkness and suggestion, convey a feeling of sadness and loss. French-Jewish artist Christian Boltanski, Greek artist Jannis Kounellis, Columbian artist Doris Salcedo, all have produced work that gives rise to sense of collective mourning. Holocaust Memorials in Berlin and Washington and the memorial iron sculpture Shoes by the Danube by Gyula Pauer and Can Togay all attest to the insurmountable numbers of those affected by atrocities. The smoking shoes I used referred to another type of disappearance: that reputably caused by a direct lightning strike! And so to the vanishing and evaporating spirit.
boundaries may be crossed and cultural content and contemporary existence are mixed in complicated ways. Since participating in Melaka Arts and Performance Festival in Malaysia in 2010 and in The Arts Island Festival in Indonesia in 2013 we started observing trance rituals, and in 2013 we undertook a monthlong residency in Penang, Malaysia, to observe the Taoist shamanistic practices of Tang Ki during the Chinese Hungry Ghost Festival. From this research we developed the project Unappeased which received Australia Council funding through Creative Partnerships with Asia. Unappeased takes ritual enactment as a springboard motif, and was realized through residencies in Penang, Parramatta, Bathurst and Albury in 2014-2015.
We intend our work to be rich in associations for each individual, and that the combined effect of our separate approaches and interpretations leads to varied and multi-layered interpretations of a We seek to provide imagery that synergistic event, something WeiZen gives rise to different sets of terms dialogical performance. associations and meanings, and Having lived and worked in both these are also subject to cultural Asia and Australia means that we interpretation. Inter-culturality in both embody and carry the imagery our performance is a device we employ more than expression of who of place and culture with us. we are. It generates a place where  The performance was really two works, WeiZen outside and my ceremony in the main hall.