Traces of The Wind
Vault Fringe Festival 2023
Co-directed, devised and performed by Xi Chen, Jiajing Zhao and Jiuming Duan (Not Set group)
It whispers to your ear, pieces of memories, and silently slips away. You don’t know where it comes, and where it will go. You don’t know when it will appear and how it will end. It travels between past, present, and the future, across lands and the sea. Eventually, it becomes time and space…
Traces of The Wind is a poetic, multi-sensory exploration of our ineffable, bodily and spiritual links with the wind.
Presented by an interdisciplinary art and theatre group, Not Set(Founded by Xi Chen, Zhao Jiajing and Jiuming Duan) creates an immersive experience with interacting installations, live sound, video, light, and objects. The performance traces unseen forces of the wind that evoke subtle emotions and memories on stage.
The project began by interviewing people about their memories of wind. We gathered stories and memories from interviewees across various cultural and social backgrounds. This series of experiences were then designed according to collective inter-individual experiences of wind utilizing a theatrical, sonic, and technological approach.
‘One gets a strong sense that something beautiful is happening.’ - The Upcoming
Creative Team
Co-Director, Deviser and Performer: Xi Chen, Jiuming Duan, Zhao Jiajing
Composer and Sound Design: Zhao Jiajing
Set Design: Jiuming Duan
Dramaturg: Xi Chen
Creative Coding: Yueshen Wu
Graphic design: Yitong Feng
Technical Stage manager: Angus Wu
Marketing and Communications Coordinator: Sam Hind
Many thanks to following interviewers for their great contribution to our show: Susan Atwill, Zhihang Li, Ran Bi, Chang Meng, Nirav Beni, Yajie Liu, Peilin Wu, Siyu Hao, Dayou Geng, Yuan Xiang, Pei-yao Chang, Savyna Indranee Darby, Portia Lee, Dor Cohen.
With special thanks to: Fan Ji, Qiyuan Zhao, Jingyi Sun, Arthur Wilson, Claudia Palcova, Chenwei Wang, Saiyuan Li, Jade Gong, Malachy Orozco.
We are grateful to Iskandar and Mingyu from Ellandar Theatre Production Company, as well as David Byrne, the Artistic Director and CEO of the Royal Court, for their willingness to support and assist us in further developing this project after the Vault Festival. As an emerging artistic group, this is an incredible source of encouragement for us.