On Saturday, September 7th, we held an intimate ribbon-cutting ceremony to open Jasmine Zhang’s exhibition, I Dream About Finding a Lotus Pond. Jasmine will be working in the gallery, using the space as a studio and rehearsal space, through October 13th. The exhibition is meant to be collaborative, highly improvisational, and with a focus on performance. October 10th-11th, from sunset to sunrise, Jasmine will be performing Shine for U at the gallery. (This performance will be best viewed from across the street.)

*To mark the culmination of Jasmine’s time working in the gallery, Jasmine and her collaborators—Silas Morrow, Connor Tomaka, Yiliu, Harley Healy, and Blanca Bercial—will be sharing a series of performances at the gallery on Sunday, October 13th, beginning at 3 PM.

Couple days ago I was talking with a mutual friend of both me and jasmine, he told me he doesn’t understand what jasmine is doing, he implied artists tried too hard to be cool. I don’t understand how our perception on the same thing can be so different.

The following days I’ve been constantly thinking about the idea of misreading, confronting different trauma and self projection, in a way everything we perceive is a mixture from memory and experience.

Fact 1: we started to know each other early this year, at that time we were both depressed.

Misreading: first impression: jasmine is a quiet and calm person.

Fact 2: language is a tool.

Misreading: The accuracy of information needs to meet modernity’s demand for efficiency. Language, as a carrier of information, becomes increasingly singular in meaning through constant refinement and categorization. Language is neatly tamed; when people speak or think, this structure weaves into the everyday, existing every moment. However, this structure is a hallucination that provides safety; the impermanence and chaos of its nature are forgotten. Yet poets’ nomadic lands still try to find different connection points, creating a spectacle.

Fact 3: translation

Misreading: I’m a foreigner, translation happened in my mind every second I tried to make people understand me. At the same time, as I use another language for a longer time, the language of the voice in my head also changes. Over time, the work of translation decreases. Slowly, English trained my brain bit by bit.

Fact 4: Jasmine did a collaboration with Sophie Appel at Et al on May.24. Instead of reading it, Jasmine improvised her poetry The World’s Largest Cherry Pie.

Misreading: sequence of words were reformed to the vibration directed from the body, in connection with the readers in a physical way, bodily reaction ahead of the thinking happened. The meaning shifts again and again during conversation like the game of Chinese whisper. Why not just sing it?

Fact 5: Jasmine is doing a good translation work.

Misreading: Jasmine is trying to help others.

Fact 6: Jasmine’ performance piece Shine for U happened on 10.10 sunset to 10.11 sunrise at Climate Control. She played an automatic light but operated the light manually when people pass by.

Misreading: Automatic lights must have a different opinion to Jasmine after the whole night working. The interaction that arises when the audience knows this is manual labor—participants’ behavior shifts from merely passing by to stopping out of curiosity and giving more active feedback as they face the automatic lights. Contemporary society keeps manufacturing products to make life more convenient and efficient, while people living within it repeatedly use it as a decorative landscape. Imagine the curiosity and interaction of someone seeing an automatic light for the first time.

Jasmine always tells me “做艺术就是意思意思”，i see her practice as a question instead of answers, in pushing audiences back to the state of kids, only curious. I believe feelings can reside in ambiguity, the gap of meaning and reasons. Jasmine translates in different ways, establishing new connections. Impermanence and chaos are still present, and regardless of how misreadings occur, they can be seen as a humorous offering.

-Yiliu