Type: site-specific Theater/Sound Theater/Performance Art

Performers: Tan Tan, Jiazheng + Zheng Xi, Shi Jing

Duration: about 1 hour

Time: 5 pm, October 4, 2019

Place: Han Tao Art Museum

Performed at the 1st Laiwu International Factory Theatre Festival, Laiwu, Shandong

A hose in this work is a channel of intimate communication between strangers, meanwhile, it is also a path that leads people to the world of sound.

This world surrounds you all the time, but you have never entered; it is as if you and I are walking on the same road, but living in two parallel universes.

＊This work was originally planned for the environment of an abandoned factory but temporarily adjusted due to the site change.

At 5 o'clock in the afternoon on October 4, in the auditorium of the Han Tao Art Museum's open-air theater, a group of weird people with various hoses appeared suddenly.

They fiddled with these hoses, repeating some non-human actions, as if these hoses were parts of their bodies, like tentacles, hair, tail, limbs...

A few minutes later, two performers (Jia Zheng and Shi Jing), a man and a woman, connected their hoses together. Then, they began to "talk" through the long hose-one person spoke to one end, the other listened from the other end, speaking in a language that no one could understand.

They got down from the seat in the auditorium and connected their hose to the hose wrapped around Tan Tan's neck. They pulled her down like walking an animal.

Tan Tan was drawn forward violently by the two performers. She seemed to be an alien caught by the earthmen, only could jump forward with her legs.

As the three performers walked towards the audience step by step, another masked performer (Zheng Xi) came out with a saxophone and slowly followed behind them.

He didn't play any music, but only made some intermittent, dialogue-like, rapid or slow notes.

The three performers suddenly rushed into the audience and began to use the hose as a rope to chase and intercept the crowd! Many people tried to run away, but there are still a few people "unfortunately" trapped in the circle enclosed by the tube.

What they didn't expect was that the real performance only started from now.

The performers distributed the hoses to them. Everyone grasped the two ends of two hoses that connected with other people, to form a closed circle.

Tan Tan began to speak softly into a hose and asked the first person who heard her words to pass them to the second person, and then the second person passed the content to the third... After the words came back to Tan Tan, she started to say the second sentence, and so on.

The content of these words is simple:

Hi

How are you

Can you hear me

Do you want to listen to me?

Welcome to Tan Tan's work "Sound/Tunnel"

Now you will enter a sound universe that you have never entered before

Due to the material and shape of the hoses, everyone heard the sound in private but remote, which made them drawn into a black hole of space despite the noisy environment.

Later, the four performers brought the participating audience to a lakefront nearby and started the second part of the work.

As there is a distance between the grassland and the theater festival venues, it gave people a feeling of suddenly coming back in nature.

Everyone in the audience received a blindfold to enjoy the sound journey.

The performers walked gently to each audience in turn, stretched different types of hoses close to their ears, and spoke to them with extremely subtle voices.

"You will hear a concert that belongs only to you. When there is no sound, please listen to nature's performance."

The four gradually started an impromptu concert. They randomly select the audience as an individual or a combination, so that each audience heard a unique, unrepeatable, and customized concert.

Gradually, it went dark. A family of three who was originally became the performers, spontaneously using these hoses to sing and communicate privately with each other...

At last, the audience removed their blindfolds and return to the ordinary world.What caught their sight was an unforgettable sunset.