Skylight
Shih-Ying Hu
April, 2019 Portland, OR, U.S.
Videographer: Mario Gallucci
April, 2019 Portland, OR, U.S.
Videographer: Mario Gallucci
“Skylight” is a live performance play of inside and outside that responds to the special and existing environment of the PNCA main building.
Indoors, the audience can move through the space, looking up, down, or even around the room at other viewers. I want this to be an experience where the viewer is made aware of their own body through movement and reflection. In the aquarium-like space, my body becomes a bird on the skylight, and reflects on the mirror as a fish in a pool. The audience acts as the human in relation to creatures of the sky or water, acting out how people perceive and observe nature. This setup also complicates the relationship between the immediate movement and its reflection. The reflection of my body in the mirror becomes an object which is not the same as my body against the skylight. What you sense to the world is not the world itself; it is filtered through your perception. The audience is free to look everywhere in the environment, but I want to highlight that the audience must make a series of choices on where to focus their attention: either focus means the loss of the other.
The audience in the outdoor environment experiences my body as a landscape, reflected in the glass like a mountain on a lake, its vulnerability contrasted by the metal and glass structure of the building and the cityscape behind it.
The narrative embodied in the performance itself is that of growing into my identity: from early exploration and curiosity, to hurt and self-protection, to confidence and a clear gaze on the world. By overlapping the image of my body with those of the audience, I am speaking about commonality in these human experiences. By this narrative and dance-theatre like performance, I am trying to make visible the interrelation between the subject itself (my body) and others’ perception of it.
Indoors, the audience can move through the space, looking up, down, or even around the room at other viewers. I want this to be an experience where the viewer is made aware of their own body through movement and reflection. In the aquarium-like space, my body becomes a bird on the skylight, and reflects on the mirror as a fish in a pool. The audience acts as the human in relation to creatures of the sky or water, acting out how people perceive and observe nature. This setup also complicates the relationship between the immediate movement and its reflection. The reflection of my body in the mirror becomes an object which is not the same as my body against the skylight. What you sense to the world is not the world itself; it is filtered through your perception. The audience is free to look everywhere in the environment, but I want to highlight that the audience must make a series of choices on where to focus their attention: either focus means the loss of the other.
The audience in the outdoor environment experiences my body as a landscape, reflected in the glass like a mountain on a lake, its vulnerability contrasted by the metal and glass structure of the building and the cityscape behind it.
The narrative embodied in the performance itself is that of growing into my identity: from early exploration and curiosity, to hurt and self-protection, to confidence and a clear gaze on the world. By overlapping the image of my body with those of the audience, I am speaking about commonality in these human experiences. By this narrative and dance-theatre like performance, I am trying to make visible the interrelation between the subject itself (my body) and others’ perception of it.
Click link below to watch the performance:
https://vimeo.com/493193326
https://vimeo.com/493193326