The Vitrine of Dancing Culture
for 4A x Performance 2018
Nintendo Wii, Just Dance 2015-2018, HD TV monitor, LED lights, blinds
This performance was commissioned by 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art and presented at Art Central Hong Kong; supported by the CreateNSW Rapid Response Grant
The Vitrine of Dancing Culture is a museographic installation that is activated by a durational dance ritual using a Nintendo Wii to examine the neocolonisation of popular culture and cultural tourism. Through repetition, this performance intends to bring into question an individual's stamina when facing the expectations of cultural competence and visibility.
In The Vitrine of Dancing Culture, Garcia draws inspiration from The Couple In The Cage (1992-93) by Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Coco Fusco, in which she similarly interrogates the anthropological phenomenon of ethnographic exhibition, which has hostorically placed subaltern bodies on display in museums, zoos, circuses and theatres. She performs as a reanimated corpse, a disembodied spirit.
This performance series straddles between delight and discomfort to explore the concept of future folklore as a diasporic body that shape-shifts and performs translocated ritual, positioned in the portal between the binaries of ancient and future, analog and digital, indigenous and colonised, traditional and modern.
Photo Credit: Jacquie Manning, courtesy of Art Central Hong Kong