Cancer Space

濕地Venue, Taipei, Taiwan

TYpe

Projection Design

year

2020

role

Projection Design

Cancer Space is an interactive theater performance as a metaphor for the body with cancer.

I build on Foucault’s heterotopia “world within world” concept to explore the relation between the psycho-somatic space of a body with cancer and the external world.
Everyone has Cancer in the brain, which is from the accumulation of daily life emotions. However, we grow numb with the Cancer which is overwhelmed by others’ expectations and social values.

Psycho-somatic space and external world

The audience walks into a narrow underground space transformed into a theatrical space, as if they are walking into the performer’s brain, and are invited to sit anywhere they wish.
Cancer Space will catch you and release all the hiding feelings in daily life. When people go out of the Cancer Space in the theater, the world outside is a larger Cancer Space.

Perceive your cancer

Through this experience, the audience can release a flood of emotional sensations: fear, despondency, tension, sensitivity or anxiety and project those feelings onto the performer, who connects them to their inner Cancer.

Video Projection Design

Interactive video projection

The video projection plays an active role in the interaction between the performers and spectators’ bodies in real time, breaking the fourth wall.
The performer guides the spectators to touch the projected animated light halos to trigger the projection of film fragment sequences from previous scenes.
To create an immersive environment, I installed five projectors in the space and designed the video projection onto three wall facades and hanging drapes surrounding the spectators.

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Responsible for three scenes of videos. More Videos: https://vimeo.com/showcase/9021100

Observe the performer’s (I-HSIN) gestures and her sensation during the daily activities— from waking up, washing the face, getting dressed, commuting, watching a movie and self-reconstruction— to shape the emotions into animated light halos, rhythmic optical patterns, film fragments and digital linear doodles, which are interwoven into the performance narrative and interact in real time with the performer’s daily gestures.

■【01 Scene: Waken】

I-HSIN slowly opened her eyes but felt stuck on the bed. Every movement seemed difficult to her, even a wake-up. She gradually accommodated this space and the spectators around her.

■【02 Scene: Getting dressed】

Piles of clothes crammed in the space, but I-HSIN could not find the clothes that really suit her. She kept changing and seeking the ideal look.

■【03 Scene: Self-reconstruction】

The uncertainty, anxiety or sensation became fragments and continually output from I-HSIN’s psycho-somatic space. Those frequencies became ripple and illusions which reconstructed and converse with her to remind her to be alive.

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