Confrontation Pan Daijing

My performance consists of improvisation in sound and theatrical elements based on a narrative and the study of movements. I didn’t come from an academic background in art or music. While growing up in China I wasn’t involved in any community or such. But through observations I thought of the club as a space where people come together out of curiosity. And no matter if there is something experimental happening or not, I always see a tension between the artist and the audience in clubs.

The thing with my live performances is that I never play the same set twice. It’s roughly forty different sets now since I first played out back in China—all based on different concepts, sounds and even costumes. A certain performance only happens in that one particular club at that one particular time. Therefore I want to know from the curators or the bookers what the space is like, what the concept of the night or the venue is…you know, just all those things. This is a great possibility to interact with an event—so not only with the crowd itself, but with everything involved. It is an important feature of my performance and I’d say this has evolved. Nowadays I definitely feel more comfortable performing and dealing with the feeling of being vulnerable. Same goes for the sound devices. I am more confident and braver in provoking the audience, while also being more aware of an energy exchange that is happening between the audience and me.

Yes, I do realize that there is a possibility in the production of shows with theatres, festivals and museums. This year I am gradually building a whole new method of performing live with sound material from my upcoming EP on PAN and with visual collaborations. The use of my voice and body is also very different from earlier appearances. And I do not think it’s just an A/V show. Currently I am collaborating with artists from a different aesthetic and technology background. I take visuals as one actor in my whole story together with me, the stage and the audience. So I will be interacting with it and using visual elements to shape my narrative for the first time. It’s a work in progress.

Actually, yes. I do a lot of recordings but I only had one release in more than one year. Personally, I prefer to share my music live with the idea of this once-in-a-lifetime experience: you only get it now and won’t ever have it again. I enjoy this and also I don’t want to see my recordings getting turned into business. Of course that’s what is going to happen eventually after you put out your first record, but this is not exactly my main goal. Still, I record a lot of music. Also a lot of dance music. I enjoy just jamming at home as much as I like playing live. But making an actual record is something totally different, because to me it feels more like something I have to craft very particularly. I need to have a clear concept and statement of what I want to express with the record. People are actually in possession of my music once it’s out, and they might listen to it again and again. Therefore I want to deliver a message. Performing live on the other hand is about taking one shot, and that’s it.

Right, like a narrative. At the start of the set—and I actually get this feedback a lot—people are confused. Like, “what the fuck is this?” And I like that a lot, to trigger things instead of just feeding into them. A big part of it is improvisation, but I do a lot of speaking and acting, so words and monologues together with dance. They are all based on specific concepts together with the playbacks. It feels like every gig I take is a task. I need to create something that’s part of me to meet the people and the space.

Yes. Maybe it’s not the most accurate way to say this, but I sometimes feel like a rapist to my audience. They are there and I want to push them to their limits, to bring them to a certain state of mind and to open something. Director Michael Haneke once said about the relationship between him and his audience that he rapes the viewers into independence. That’s something I can relate to. He also mentioned how—for him—making a movie is easier than watching it.

I don’t think I do the above mentioned thing on purpose while performing. In fact, I’m trying to be a very honest and vulnerable person on stage. It’s about trying to share a sincere, intimate moment with everybody in the club. That’s maybe a little unexpected because it seems like people tend not to be very honest in clubs in general. But I like this contradiction.

I kind of do this on purpose. Why do things when it doesn’t make a difference? But sometimes I also do just a machine jam. Last time I played at Berghain I did a very dance-y set. It requires a very special situation for me to want to do that, and when I play this more traditional stuff I want it to be really aggressive. So in a sense I want to be provocative in my own way. And even if the people won’t like it, they will think of it as something a little bit different. Even if they leave after half of the show.

What do you mean by confrontational?

I want to trigger things they don’t want to look at. The thing about the “underground” is that it’s hidden. In clubs, for example, people come and mostly they want to escape and hide from something, so they get high and dance. I understand this state of mind—I want to get there and look at something that they tend not to look at inside themselves. I try to provoke a specific atmosphere. It happens every now and again. Therefore also my stage set-up is always close to or within the audience. I move around and interact with the audience. And there are always a lot of people coming to hug me while I’m playing. A girl would come up and put her head on my shoulder. Just like that. People suddenly think that you—as the performer—know how they are feeling. It’s strange. And I think videos of various performances are not at all accurate to the experience you had while being there, because certain things you just can’t capture with a camera. It’s what I mentioned earlier: I try to create something only for that particular night. And it’s not going to happen again. Ever.

That only happened twice, though for different reasons. My performance involves topics such as sexuality and nudity, and people still are quite sensitive about these issues. It wasn’t even about the issues themselves—more a matter of how I wanted to present them. The promoters didn’t know what to expect and this uncertainty scared them. To be fair: this seems to be a problem for a lot of promoters everywhere. If they don’t know what to expect, they don’t want it.

It probably scares some people because I’m a woman. And then there’s the bookings coming in because I am a woman and the promoters are obviously just looking for a female act or because I’m from a foreign country. Seeing a woman from another continent doing this is definitely not natural and comfortable for Europeans. They immediately shift the focus from your work to your gender and background which I find very frustrating.

I do not like to put them before my work. For me, the creative output is the most important. And through it I can say what I want instead of letting an all-female or “Asian group” speak for me. It’s important to remind individuals that they are strong enough to speak up for themselves.

Exactly. They’re using you. I don’t want to get too political here but it also happens in interviews, and I think that’s a really Western thing. They come straight up to me, taking advantage of my heritage. “So, I heard you’re against the one-child policy”? They want me to say that. They want to victimize me as that girl running away from China. I’m not running away from anything. I’m just growing, learning and eventually I found a more comfortable habitat. But I am by no means rejecting my history—my history is actually a big part of me. That’s the kind of situation I feel most confronted by: victimize me and focus on my background, my look and my gender, and not my work. It’s disturbing.

Yes, and it sometimes feels like they are looking at you as a product. It’s tricky.

I am definitely open to all possibilities in my art practice. Sound is the form that I’m most comfortable with now. But through it started to develop into other forms, involve other elements to accomplish my ideas. They grow faster and bigger than I do myself which requires a better understanding of expressions every day. My understanding of what is musical and what is non-musical also involves a longer process. I do not consider myself much of a musician at the moment. Actually I don’t consider myself to fit any specific title, I’ve just been telling stories in my own way; just like choreographers do with dancers, composers with symphony, poets with imagination and architects with space. I’m working on a lot of things now that are already taking me to a different direction which I’m very excited about.