Hot Pot Smog (Why don’t we go home?) (2019)

Hot pot and smog - a pair of ambivalent symbols for the winter in Beijing. The piquant smell and steam of hot pot forms a peculiar alignment with the presence of smog. With this bizarre parallelism and superposition, this piece tries to establish a nostalgic vision about Hotpot smog.

Audience are invited to a Chinese hot pot banquet, with masks - the necessary equipment to survive a smog day in Beijing, on their face. They enter the smog illusion created by the hot pot and travels back to Beijing. In the transpiration of mist, the warm Chinese dinner time and the serious air pollution problem intervenes.

This performance creates a sense of liveness that is strange as well as intimate. It is a collective action that at the same time points to private experience. Together with video and sound materials from extracted from our personal memories of our hometown, the tension and intertextuality between Chinese food, meteorological symbol, and urban memory are slowly unfolded. By creating a symbolic hometown space in the Hotpot Smog site in London, we try to decode our ambivalent homesickness of our first winter of studying abroad.

Concept & Performance: Tianyi Hong & Yuan Yue

Premiere: Live Art Club, London, 23/01/2019

在异国的第一个冬天，我们最想念家乡的什么？火锅与雾霾——北京的冬天里一对矛盾的象征物。火锅底料的浓烈气味及蒸腾的热气与雾霾在味觉与视觉上形成了奇特的对位，借由这种叠加与错位关系，我们试图建立有关 “火锅—— 雾霾”的乡愁式想象。

        这场行为表演集会既陌生又亲密，它是一场集体行动，却指向私人经验。在火锅宴这一兼具私密属性与社交功能的独特饮食活动中，我们试图以当下中国日益严重的环境污染问题为切入口，直面内心的复杂乡愁。

         在蒸腾的雾气中，温馨亲密的中式聚餐时刻与大气污染问题彼此介入，协同与北京相关的私人影像与声音资料，我们将在异国的“雾霾火锅”集会现场虚构出一个符号化的故乡空间。

          观众将被邀请戴上口罩——北京雾霾天的必备装备，进入火锅制造的雾霾幻境，与我们一同返乡，探索中国饮食行为、气象符号、与城市记忆之间的张力与互文关系。

概念&表演：洪天贻 岳元

首演：Live Art Club, 伦敦, 23/01/2019