[ pleasure spaces x 五 ]

[ pleasure spaces x 五 ] is a set of five process-oriented performance + media tapestries, centering on soundmaking, embodied practices and visual-mnemonic assemblies.

Drawing inspiration from dynamism and harmony of five phases elemental theory (五行 wuxing), the piece unfolds from a personal and schematic auto-documentation process, exploring possible dynamics in which reality can be shaped through experiential pleasure.

Part intimate archive and part book of methods, the piece initially unfolded as a promise to self(s), to make space for narratives, intimacies, and wanderings that frequently are pushed aside. These spaces explore this idea of ‘diversion’ as a fertile ground for communion and an accumulation of media interaction.

From the musical sense of repertory and daily cultivation — sound is used as a living cartography of embodied sequences, generative creation, and queer mythologies of being. The piece employs an interdisciplinary score — an invented language of sound, image, process work, mnemonic prompts, embodied movement, and the facilitation of affective environments. The score is performable across various media and instruments — and was premièred through a blend of sounds: post-classical cello, affective soundgardens, and campy beats.

The spaces are developed by simply being alive, listening to quiet spaces, breathing and being in places and with people we love. They are tools for existence, disrupting fear-based experiences, loud and disembodied narratives. They are a permission to work in care and pleasure, without specific outcome. They are fragmented gardens reconstructing a sense of self(s), or simply relishing in the glittering light of broken glass—crystalline eroticsm and sensory beingness.

What we do and what we make is not extended beyond, outside, later; how shall we inhabit other ways of being?

[ pleasure spaces x 五 ] (in 5 pieces):

一～

雲琴 cloud + chord

immortal mountain (一 pluck in the mists). white crane takes flight. a string I’m feeling, a dream I’m dreaming. standing with arms out as you wait behind to catch me. superposed flora and all angles of memory (old photograph).

二～

行 path

…as the waves changed. life and nothingness. an etymological evolution of sound texture from water its mother. remember the sound of colours when you spoke to me?

三～

夢 dream

[ liminal city of dreams. bed of swans and construction projects. bedroom portraits in spectral memory. nodes and maps. i am still breathing, whispers the wind ] — tape loop

四～

機 loom

verbal tapestry, embodied schematic, heat sequences and lipstick in a photobooth in concrete lands' astral double. a web I’m weaving, a dream I’m dreaming.

五～

田 field

to fill tomorrow’s belly: soundgarden of vermillion flora and half-finished conversations.

where are we? who are we? why did we? how will we?

Press Coverage

https://panm360.com/en/gig_review/sight-sound-fili-gibbons/ (review)

Sors Tu? (recommended performance)