07
2013
 
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Events 2013

12.07.–13.07.2013
Lectures/Events

Walk Like a Chinese
Workshop with Bo Zheng

Friday, July 12, 2013, 2 p.m.
Saturday, July 13, 2013, 2 p.m.

Bo Zheng held a workshop in Salzburg as part of the exhibition Occupied. ORTung 2012. Participants were taught how to walk with a relaxed body and mind. The workshop focused on forgetting how urban spaces and rules have shaped and disciplined our way of walking –¬ one of the most basic aspects of our life. A video recorded in public space in China showing typical ways of walking served as a visual aid: leisurely walking and chatting in a group, never walking in a straight line, walking while eating sunflower seeds (and spitting the shells on the street), etc. Both the video made in China and the video of the workshop were then shown in the exhibition Occupied. ORTung 2012(18.07 –15.09.2013).

This idea came about when someone in Strobl asked me if some tourists there were Japanese or Chinese. I said I could tell that they were Japanese. I thought about the reason later, and realized that it’s because their body gestures have been shaped by decades of urbanity. We (Chinese) are decades behind in the modernization process and our walking is not yet disciplined (though the relaxed way of walking is being threatened now). The workshop ties into the Occupied theme in at least two ways – occupying the street simply by different ways of walking, and how to free our mind from the state of being occupied (that we have to reach a destination in the most efficient manner e.g.). Bo Zheng

Bo Zheng, Walk Like a Chinese, 2013

Bo Zheng, Walk Like a Chinese, 2013
Photo: Bo Zheng