Welcome to the desert of the real

“Welcome to the desert of the real”

Jacque Lacan pointed that “Truth—arising from misunderstnading”. People try to break away from the behavior of being controlled whereas they turn into the efforts of acquiring the power of control, and people trys to design their own fortunes while ultimately they become the targets of such efforts. “King Oedipus” eluded the truth of prophecy and ultimately he became the victim of the prophecy (The true story of murdering his father Laius and marrying his mother).

“Welcome to the desert of the real” still follows the concept of “theatre”, i.e., how to develop and build a possibility of a live scene out of the multitudinous relationships. “Welcome to the true desert/Welcome to the desert of the real” will all along keep the human body into a network of relationships, present a live scene with the display of multiple systems and demonstrate a conflicting theme along with the change of time.

The starting point of “welcome to the desert of the real” is based on a true report: a 16-year-old boy from the rural region of China went to the city with his parents, and the city had been regarded as the symbol of his future and he tried to identify the true position that could lead him to his future, however, only the virtual world could give him a true position as well as online games which offered him freedom. He tried his best to escape the realities, therefore, he had to rely on the virtual world to determine his own destiny and use illusions against fears. Consequently, the realities and illusions were inosculated as a whole, and misconceptions, presumptions and misunderstandings were regarded as the basis of behavior, In the end, his escapism  turned the murder in the virtual world into a true incident.

“Welcome to the desert of the real” consists of two parts:

The part of installation and models:

It lies in the dual concepts of the stage and the platform, as it can not only be regarded as a whole performing stage, but also gradually produce different forms of modalities along with the change of time, while it can even be used as props by the performers so that the relationship between the performers and the audience can be continuously changed. All the performers use various kinds of tools, models, costumes as well as the space, and they continually produce different “artificial conditions” which constitute a highly changeable and complicated landscape.

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The part of the behavior performance:

The performers appear with multiple “identities” , and they behave as their behavior pattern , an imaginator, an infester, a lurker and an imitator, whereby they respectively constitute four different attitudes to portray the same theme and form a multiple and contradictory live scene.

“Welcome to the desert of the real” will deliver an overlapping space, i.e., how to develop and demonstrate the possibility of a live scene out of a multitudinous relationship, whereas the live scene provides groups of “symptom”, and each scene and situation entails multiple information; meanwhile, the occurrence and development of an incident always exist inside the relationship among different incidents, plus a domain of reference that intertwines the truth and fiction as well as the reality and illusions. In the end, the audience can use his/her own knowledge and experience to “edit” his/her own versions.

Wang Jianwei

20 January, 2009