Interview with Yuenjie on Wednesday

Updated questions sent to Yuenjie

Here are the updated questions sent to Yuenjie:

1. What is your inspiration of the use of mediums in your performance (e.g. the stickers, umbrella & harmonica)?
2. In your recent published book, you use the pupa figure as the book cover, is the pupa itself has any special meaning to you?
3. In the 4th episode of pupa, concerning the 5.4 tragedy, you stick some black labels on the floor before you formed yourself into a human pupa, is there any meaning before the black labels?
4. Pupa for us has a meaning of sign of reborn. In your live art, it seemed that even you were transformed and reborn from the pupa, you still looked sad, just as the same as you hadn't formed yourself into the pupa. May we ask what is the meaning of pupa to you?
5. Can you tell us more about your feelings and thoughts during the performances?
6. What would you do if someone had tried to break your pupa while you were performing? Or have you ever expected for someone to "save" you out from the pupa when you perform?
7. Have you faced any difficulties in these performance, in terms of technique, physiology, social conflicts and mental issues?
8. What is live art performance for you? Is it a performance to express your feelings and thoughts to audience or is it a channel to reach your self-reflection of life or for your spiritual enhancement?
9. In some of your performance works from different series, we find that you are quite engaging in talking about local social issues and criticizing social phenomena. How do you extract and insert those issues into your ideas of artworks?
10. You have started Symbiotic Dance recently, is there any reflection of changes in your life direction?
11. From some articles we have read, some say Yuenjie tends to use sorrow as the motivation of the art development. So may we ask your opinions about sorrow and sadness and the correlation with the motivation and creativity of your art development.
12. Last Sunday and Monday, the 13-14th of March, I acted in a Joint University drama performance of CityU as an actress, it was my first time on stage. The experience was so unforgettable. We know that you used to be a stage performer, yet you sooner turned to start your live art business and left stage ever. What made you want to leave the stage? Or what made you want to start your live art performance? Was there any critical issue happened?
13. In 2009, you had been back to stage to retrospect your live art performance from the past ten years. How did you feel when you re-perform on stage compare with your first performances of those art works?
14. Live art performance is different from performance on stages, there are no booklets telling the story and intention behind the act, so how can you make sure your audiences will not misinterpret the meaning behind your performances?
15. Last but not least, a very personal question. Performance is so unique from any other art piece, it cannot be copied, and thus hard to be sold. So how do you balance between art development and life, and how do you make your living?

Manman (Carol Lai)

Own feeling and thought (by Sing)

“Life itself is already of art. Everyone can be a performance artist as long as you add ideas and creativity into your life." Yuenjie said. After searching and savoring his performance works, Yuenjie，he did have been exactly accomplishing what he think and believe. 

Actually, he just behaves his life and expresses his thought specially and creatively. Considering that the social issue in Hong Kong, everyone will have his or her own thought and feeling on that particular events. Normally, people will just think in mind or discuss it with the others, even somebody will use their bodies to express feeling while they are talking with the others. 

But for Yuenjie, he just adds more ideas and elements to express what he thinks. "Just make it special".  For example, some HK people want to express their feeling, thought and belief on the June Fourth, they may go to June Fourth Soiree. As for Yuenjie, he was though the Human-pupa performance to express. He tied himself by "cocoon". After the time, he came out from it. (Audience) People surround him witnessed the whole process. Indeed, audience have already been understanding his thought and listening his feeling. 

In fact, what he did and used are simple. He just used pen, paper, umbrella, adhesive paper and other simple stuff as materials to perform. He just did some simple actions in performance without complicated movement. He just chooses simple and related area and time, without in any noble place. All are simple. However, this "simple" has made him different, especially made his life different, even made the audience different.

Man's opinion towards Human Pupa

As per our research, Yuenjie has used pupa for his live art at least four times.
Pupa gives me an implication of "reborn".
In this series of live art, Yuenjie made some slight differences each time he acted and gave each live act a different title to it.
I think using the idea of pupa is very creative. And the message behind, reborn, can be mixed with many other ideas and concepts so to enrich them. It can be a way to emphasize two completely different concepts, or even two extremes. Pupa, to me is a mean of life also. It shows strong impressions of positive energy, eager of subsistence, as well as hope.
It is, therefore, I think the idea of using the concept of pupa is great.

However, may it be the video recording problem, I can see no scene about how Yuenjie was look like before covering himself with those stickers. I have no clue to find out what has been changed before and after.
On the 4th episode, Yuenjie was clearly showing his sadness, concern and blessing of the victims of 512 Earthquake. He wrote down the words, 'Release from the grief', to express his feeling explicitly. I thought he was trying to use the moment of getting out from the "pupa" to show the meaning of release. But after he was out from the "pupa", the sadness in his facial expression came still, it seemed that even though people might try hard to get away from the sadness, it could hardly be success.
Pupa, can be a sign of reborn and hope; whereas Mummy, can be a sign of death and horror. If the medium used is not properly and carefully determined, the message and the feeling of an act can entirely different.
Unfortunately, the sticker used as a Human Pupa seemed quite alike a Mummy to me. If no umbrella was broken out from the costume and no such peaceful music was produced, these pieces of artwork would mean signs of despair, pain and death to me.
Therefore, I think the umbrella and the harmonica take very important role in the success of these live arts.

Questions 2 to Yuenjie MARU

•  In your performance works of different series, we find that you are quite engaged in talking about social issues in Hong Kong. It seems that you are likely to criticize our social phenomena. Why do you tend to do that? Is there nothing worth to appreciate in Hong Kong though live performance?

•  How do you think about "Time"? Why we ask such question is because the time and the material - clock are always being used in your performance?

• What is the meaning of live performance for you? Is it just a performance to express your feeling and thought to audience or it is your channel to reach self-reflection and spiritual enhancement? 

Questions to Yuenjie MARU

Focus Performance: Human Pupa

Human pupa 1

Human pupa 2: Happy or Not

Human pupa 3: The Thinker

Human Pupa 4

1. Inspiration of the use of medium (the stickers, umbrella & harmonica)
2. Reason of using his pupa figure for his book cover (Special feeling towards these performance?)
3. The meaning of the black label before forming his-self in pupa (those straight lines)
4. The 3rd pupa had a significant different in the use of medium (as well as the place performed), any reason behind?
5. Any difficulty in these performance (technically, physically, mentally & socially)
6. Others: Symbiotic Dance - Any reflection of change in his life direction?
7. Others: Performance is so unique from any other art piece, it cannot be copied, and thus hard to be sold. So how does he balance between art development and life, and how to make his living?
8. Some say Yuenjie tends to use sorrow as his motivation of his art development, what is his opinion about sorrow and motivation, sadness and creativity

Some important references

Just to note down some important websites to look information for.

1. Yuenjie Maru BlogSpot
2. 2011 performance of Yuenjie's (Human Body Show)
3. 2011 performance of Yuenjie's (A Public Space Odyssey)
3. Workshop in late 2010, by Yuenjie

共生舞工作坊

Symbiotic Dance Workshop

「共生舞蹈」由本會創立，並一直持續發展，以舞蹈家 Alito Alessi 的「Ｄａｎｃｅ-Ａｂｉｌｉｔｙ」舞蹈方法為基本，糅合戲劇教育家Dan Baron Cohen 的「T r a n s f o r m a n c e 」理念及其他融合舞蹈與藝術治療元素，輔以「安格拉移動」學習，使不同的差異特質能在過程中互惠共生，共同成長。

身體歷史各異的人，皆能溝通共舞，同時發現及發展屬於自己個人的獨特舞蹈。

課程時間： (10年8月-12月期間)

共5小時（學校/ 機構可自行安排時間）

每次受惠人數：Max.30人

導師：袁堅樑　 資深融合舞蹈工作坊導師，「共生舞團」藝術總監，以DanceAbility舞蹈方法為基礎創立「共生舞蹈工作坊」，並已在香港、廣州、英國推行其工作坊。

4. Yuenjie's youtube channel
5. Other's view on Yuenjie's artwork (by InMediaHK)
6. Words of Yuenjie's in 2009: One Moment
7. Yuenjie's life: article on 4th Oct 2009
8. Yuenjie's book: yuenjieMARU LIVE ART Ten Years Performances
9. Reflection of Yuenjie's book, by WenWeiPo

Human-pupa Series

"Pupa", this image is quite often used in Yuenjie's art works in recent years. It can be represented as "Born, Disintegration, Cycle, Regeneration". He uses different materials to represent different resistance and issues in our life. For example, his work of  human-pupa of  (chinese) theatre is to talk about urban development issue. For Yuenji, he thinks that "human is the most important element" of his work. Yuenjie wants to probe into what changes will be occurred when human come out from the pupa.

Brief Introduction of Yuenjie

Yuenjie graduated from Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Department of Computing, Bachelor of Arts.  During the study period, he was an executive editor and secretary of Literary Culture Society. He started to engage in  installation art in 1995. After that, he turned to participate in different kinds of art media such as literary, theater, dance, video and so on. Yuenjie is very engaged in  various art workshops. He has participated in UpZuni Icosahedron, 1a Space, City Contemporary Dance Company, Happening Group and so forth.

Now, he is one of the active artists in  live performance. He has been an Live Performancer for 10 years. He has performed a lot of artistic works like "So close So far","Human-pupa Series","In Series". More than that, he has also been invited to performance in other countries and cities.

那麼近，這麼遠 SoCloseSoFar

“So Close So Far” is a live art work which in memory of my past love. What is “far” and what is “close” in a relationship? What is the distance between two places, such as Hong Kong and China, as well as Singapore or other cities? How far and how close of our body, as well as space and mind? As strangers, will we put off our masks?
The work related to the artist power, sex and gender, culture difference and so on, and most intensely interesting is the real happening of a relationship between man and woman.

戲棚人蛹 Human Pupa

作品欲呈現"人"和"棚"的關係. 戲棚總是每年搭建, 像每年樹上結的蛹. 數月前大埔山火做成蝴蝶品種大減危機; 而戲棚文化要一直延續下去, 便需有一個好的文化保育的環境.但人蛹不像蝶蛾般出蛹後有重大脫變, 戲棚每年搭建又拆去, 是以暫借的"時間"作的遊牧旅程, 週而復始在過去到未來的時間線上掙扎求存。"戲棚人蛹"是在戲棚結成人形的蛹, 出蛹後把殼留下的過程。