知道不知道 Do You Know or Not
Site-specific performance 2016-17
Version 1:
Interactive vocal performance, site-specific installation, audience participation
Performance and installation: Lemon Guo, Columbia Music Library, NY 2016
“Do You Know Or Not” is an interactive performance, based on investigation of the lineage of the eponymous popular Chinese folk song through its various versions in the last 60 years, each manifesting characteristics of a particular social, political, and cultural period. The work aims to recontextualize, reinterpret and reclaim the "progress" of folk music in China through an intimate and embodied performance.
Version 2:
Performance, transducers, movement, live processed voices
Hubei 120, Bi-City Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism\ Architecture, 2017
Lemon Guo is singing various versions of the Chinese folk song, "Do You Know Or Not".
Mengtai Zhang is echoing with field recordings and live processed voice through transducers on the maze structure.
'Do You Know or Not' appears as a metaphor and expression of Hubei (湖貝, an urban village in Shenzhen), but also emphasizes an essential problem: environment. The duo live performance utilizes the physical and acoustic structure of the labyrinth at the site, considering built environment and imaginary architectures as perceived in conjunction with sound, space, and the bodies, thus drawing attention to Hubei's unique geometric spatial structure, and the acoustics of the narrow alleys between the buildings. The rapid economic development of recent years has brought with it massive destruction of nature, such as sand storms, smog, water pollution, mudslide, and earthquakes. These problem, to a large extent, are caused by environmentally hazardous factors in the industrial production, and failed to raise enough awareness among the people to make a change. The erosion of nature has expanded into dimensions of civilization, culture, and history. The performance juxtaposes such "progress" embedded in the folk song and the modernization of Hubei.