Qiyun Zheng

Learning outcomes:

1. Practically further advance their research by employing the methodological tools available in this module
2. Identify the impact, risks and problems involved when engaging with this method and take the necessary steps to maintain the integrity, quality, and ethics of their research
3. Begin to observe, grasp and reflec on the reciprocal interference between their practice and this method
4. Additional: make a performance as part of the ongoing practice-led research 

In my movement research, I’ve always been interested in small and intricate frames of body parts; starting from 2023, my artistic research has been reframed as going through my body parts and identifying (unaware) social/historical/cultural disciplines. 

Especially in my performance The Opposite of My Mind, where I reflected on the historical and cultural tradition of feet-binding and my contemporary being as a Voguing dancer who needs to endure pain from wearing high heels, I was focusing on my body as a crossing point of the overlapping realities without considering that this story could represent much more people.

During the elective course, when I first heard about the theory from Judith Butler — “letting go of the body as a ‘unit’ in order to understand one’s boundaries as relational and social predicaments” (Butler, 2017), I had doubts about what strategies auto-ethnography as a method can apply, how can we practice the feeling of “letting go the unit”, and what is the relationships between auto-ethnography, individualism, and equality.

In the first research stage for my hair-cutting piece, I read extensive literature regarding hair. Through reading Chinese literature on hair traditions, I was reminded of the almost-forgot strong historical and political discipline on Chinese people’s hair that we do not often talk about now since hairstyle is not so much a life-death question in modern Chinese society. But then, when I practiced auto-writing (a method we used a lot during the course), my memories of me being policed in modern Chinese society refreshed, pulling out the overlapping reality again. Soon a piece of social news happened in China where a pink-haired girl got cyber-bullied because of her hair color to the extent that she took her life in the end under unimaginable pressure, strike me again that the disciplining on our hair is omnipresent, through different time, in everywhere, on everyone. And this is the first thought that helped me embody the feeling of breaking the harsh body unit boundaries and linking my feelings with people physically far away from me, or even people physically not existing anymore in the world.

Then as we practiced reenacting our morning rituals, I practiced inhabiting different people’s hair: in the shower, laboring to care for the hair, facing the cyber-bully, having to preserve a certain hair style or cut it to keep one’s life…… This practice helped me to go beyond my own body, further breaking the units, and to travel freely to different times, different spaces, and different situations, and share the same feelings hair disciplining brought.

But to develop a live performance of me de-disciplining the hair-disciplining stories, I recognized the potential emotional risk during and after the performance. Therefore, for the performance, I discussed not only with Zoya in the first tutorial, which is more focused on applying the auto-ethnography method and the execution, but also with Fenia on her own experience and tips after performing hair-cutting and with my Chinese friends outside of performance field for tips in a shared context. As for the setting, I chose to make the performance in my own bedroom, which is naturally a safer space to me. For the audience, I invited people I feel I can share my vulnerabilities with.

I think it’s because of this caring setting that I could be able to inhabit different hair without holding back, and the audience’s reactions showed me that the disciplining of hair is beyond cultural backgrounds, time, and different bodies. In exchanging the softened boundaries of our different bodies, we let go of the units as we were different individuals; we stopped thinking from the perspective of ourselves only and let care and shared feelings flow in our shared space, and that’s where I felt equality really happened. Till here, all my previously held questions are all solved.

After the performance, Steef and I collaborated in making a film from the shots we had in the performance by reorganizing the contents into 5 chapters and experimenting with overlapping images. The film’s narrative is a bit different from the live performance, but in a way still kept the strength of the actions and made them more organically and tightly fit with the text produced within the performance.

Even though now, after the live performance and the film are done, I think the performance is still ongoing, just like the ever-growing hair. People’s comments, my reflections on the shaved hair, and the growing hair are telling me things that I wasn’t aware of before. But within the whole process, the auto-ethnography method has already had a great influence on my future artistic research, not only showing me the power of auto-writing and reenacting the actions, but also the letting go of individualism, to seek shared equality where not just me who can benefit from de-disciplining, but that all the audience could feel freed from their unaware disciplines.

Bibliography

Butler, J. (2017). The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind. Verso Books.