Archive of a Landscape Recycling Station: The White Stone(2025)

an ecological fable set in the future,
a performance exploring the archaeological layers of landscapes

Look, trees exist; houses,

we live in, still stand. Only we

pass everything by, like an exchange of air.

And all is at one, in keeping us secret, half out of

shame perhaps, half out of inexpressible hope.

——The Duino Elegies, by Rainer Maria Rilke

After our civilisation has completely destroyed the nature, all there’s left to learn about the so-called ecology is readymade constructions. Here we have this trash mountain, located in a heterotopia. Two simple-minded daydreamers live in this melancholic and sentimental space. Day by day, they work on this ruin, try to turn it to a museum, an amusement park, a shelter.

Scientific research on nature has become a game of imagination. The catastrophe that swept through the Anthropocene has also taken away our memories, which we were so proud of: none of the characters know the meaning of technology, algorithms, progress, or elitism… They also act in a clumsy manner—which suggests a way of self-protection. The more childlike and naive the heart is, the closer it gets to the truth—the nature and the essence of life.

They never feel upset. This is what we haven’t lost in human nature: joy is a habit of the soul. And they/we—will eventually meet companions.

2025 Tsinghua Philosophy-Drama Festival, Tsinghua University

2025 Beijing Fringe Festival, Groundless Factory (an abandoned factory that is transformed to a techno venue)

Archive of a Landscape Recycling Station: The White Stone closed its curtain at the Tsinghua Philosophy-Drama Festival. This is the second and last stop of this production in 2025. From Lausanne to Beijing, this work went through 3 stages and has grown to be one of my favourite creations by far.

On the premiere night at Tsinghua University, an incident happened: the huge white fabric—that covers the folded seats to imitate the mountain—got slowly rolled into the moving platform right before the audience’s eyes. On this fake rocky slope, a giant crack quietly opened its mouth.

With alarm constantly ringing, the tear grew larger as if it were singing— as if the white stone itself had begun to speak. Perhaps it had been waiting for this moment, like a celebration.

The audience climbed up the artificial white slope, in pairs, forming a complex and evocative image: it seems we naturally long to believe in some sort of innocence, and we are naturally capable of seeking happiness and creating connections—even when this world has already been ruined by our own hands…

The story is not driven by violence, it is not a tragedy, and it doesn’t rush towards a climax. It walks, it wanders, it travels, quietly, let things passing by—this is where I wanna go in theatre.

Let’s lay down, on this plastic mountainside, then we can think about how we’ve thrown behind all these terms: speed, efficiency, violence, victory…… then we can think about what we’ve been through and how we end up here…… ‘We know nothing about the future. We believe good things will happen.’

Original inspiration: Dent de Vaulion, a mountain peak of the Swiss Jura, overlooking the lake of Joux and Vaulion is characterized by its limestone geology.

White Stone Stretching Out

Creating landscapes