This bodily movement in this dance-for-camera short is inspired by the Qing Imperial Tribute Illustrations, colonial ethnographic drawings of Taiwanese indigenous peoples commissioned by the Qianlong emperor.  The work’s camera-work and editing are inspired by Fred Moten’s theorization of Blackness as a condition of being both “more than” and “less than” one.  The piece uses editing and camera techniques that work against ideas of wholeness by fragmenting the body in close-ups, blurring in and out of focus, using interruption as an editing technique, and layering images to create multiplicity and excess.

choreography, performance and editing: Cynthia Ling Lee
videography: Caitlin Spencer
references: Emma Jinhua Teng.  2004.  Taiwan’s Imagined Geography: Chinese Colonial Travel Writing and Pictures, 1683–1895.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Fred Moten, vimeo.com/100330139
Developed as part of Reimagining Citizenship, a long-distance creative process by the Post Natyam Collective.