Co-curating dialogue: on a bridge with Zhuangzi

This presentation is an account of the process of establishing the ArtsCross project with Beijing Dance Academy and Taipei National University of the Arts. From the outset the geographical, cultural and political gaps between us, the absence of shared history and the presence of conflicting histories, amplified by disjunctures in experience and understanding and the number of people involved, meant that the need to navigate our way towards a place of meaningful exchange was critical. And we found it - in the studio and in the embodied working practices of the artists. This was essential to our work together - we simply could not have proceeded on this collaborative path without the studio practices which could be seen as a a Venn diagram of distinctive practices and knowledge, with overlapping zones, three bilateral and one trilateral, denoting places of shared knowledge and providing contact zones and springboards for dialogic exchange. An essential resources for guiding the exchange was the advice of Zhuangzi, even though he lived about 2,300 years ago in late 4th Century BCE China. His dispersed centrality, playful juxtapositions and non-hierarchical fluidity represent something of the spirit of this age, linking past with present and East Asia with London.