Periphery Pivoting: A multimedia performance by Haozhen Feng & Zairan Yu

Haozhen Feng & Zairan Yu, Periphery Pivoting, Live photo at Shanghai Tank Art Center, October 7, 2025. Image courtesy of the artist
Haozhen Feng & Zairan Yu, Periphery Pivoting, Live photo at Shanghai Tank Art Center, October 7, 2025. Image courtesy of the artist

Periphery Pivoting: A multimedia performance
by Haozhen Feng (SMACT ’25) & Zairan Yu

Project description:
The stage is enveloped by a massive, semi-transparent inflatable structure, within which light and shadow undulate like breathing. A spider-dancer awakens on the “web” with exaggerated, suspended body language. Their movements blend an insect’s mechanical precision with human lyricism.

This work (a solo contemporary dance performance) adopts the morphology and movements of a spider—arc-shaped limbs, the entanglement and pull of silk—as its physical vocabulary. Simultaneously, through an inflatable structure controlled by air pumps, which continuously expands and deflates, it actively alters the volume, texture, and acoustics of the performance space. This mechanism guides the unfolding of the narrative and constantly reshapes the performer’s boundaries of movement as well as the audience’s perspective. Each inflation of the membrane redefines the spectator’s scope of action, blurring the identity divide between viewer and performer.

Images courtesy of the artist.

Every contact with the space becomes, for them, a new equilibrium spun from the “storm.” It serves as a metaphor for a cataclysmic shift in the ecosystem—the seemingly fragile membrane bears complex tensions, at times protective, at times oppressive, ultimately generating new orders through cycles of rupture and reconstruction. The spider, in turn, symbolizes the dual human identity as both actor and the acted upon.

The creative team employs a programmable inflatable structure as the spatial carrier of the stage, integrating video, lighting, sound, scenography, and bio-costumes to merge multiple temporal frameworks. This synthesis connects the contemplations of our daily lives with the overarching theme of climate. It is also the outcome of interdisciplinary collaboration among visual artists, lighting designers, dancers, and engineers. Director Yu Zairan has long pursued balance and profound connections among nature, technology, and the individual in society through the fluidity of the body in her cross-media artistic practice.

Images courtesy of the artist.
Conceptual Statement
The inflatable membrane symbolizes the plasticity and violent potential inherent in the external systems of human society—be it climate, social mechanisms, or technological frameworks. It can uplift as much as it oppresses, just as institutions both provide resources and impose constraints. Within this space, bodily autonomy is amplified; every conscious or unconscious gesture becomes dramatic and meaningful. Fragmentation is not an end, but an opportunity for reconstruction and transformation. Ecological and social renewal often emerges from the consensus and re-weaving that follow rupture—a theatrical embodiment of Timothy Morton’s concept of “hyperobjects.”

The team for this project consists of:

Artists: Relight Studio (Zairan Yu and Haozhen Feng (SMACT ’25))

Dancer: Wu Fei

Stage Lighting Designer: Yang Shen

Musician: Zong Li

Interdisciplinary Costume & Biofluorescence Technology Support: Rikas Xiaoyan Shen (SMACT ’19)

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