Artist Spotlight #18: YOUNG-TSENG
I met Young-Tseng (“YT” to his friends) at a Rhizomatic Arts Hangout in Pomona in 2018, at the same time that I had just invited him to participate in Rhizomatic Studio’s Performance Lab. I was quickly won over by his quiet but riveting solo performances, and his willingness to support his peers in any way he could. For this month’s Artist Spotlight, I wanted to know more about how he sees a culture of sustainable arts practice developing today. YT says, “it’s empowering when I see and know artists who are doing more for themselves and other artists, and doing it with the values and practices they embody in their art making.”
Photo of Young-Tseng by Shamini Dias
Let’s start with your performance practice, and how you approach your work. what inspires you, and what do you hope viewers will experience when they see your performances?
I make movement performance work and I make installation work. I kind of think of those two as the same thing. I certainly work out how to do one or the other in the same way, with the same considerations. My attention is drawn to small things – where and how my fingers will wrap around something, whether I’m standing on my left or right foot, how far the back of a chair is from a wall and does it make a line with the door. I want to give my audience/viewer a taste of that experience because learning how to pay attention like that, through mime (Marcel Marceau and Corporeal Mime), [Tadashi] Suzuki actor training, and Viewpoints improvisation, helped me find a way to be calm, in the moment, and present in the world. Until I stumbled on mime, at first as a once a week break from sitting 12 hours a day at a computer screen, I only had a vague sense of what it meant to me to pass through or be in one place or another. Things and places seemed loud and wrapped in cotton wool at the same time. When I’m out of practice now, if I don’t rehearse or work out for a while, the cotton wool lack of presence can sometimes come back but not for long. I think I want to share that presence and sharpening of the senses with people who encounter my performance work or installations or both. It’s meditative, maybe, but not meditation, I think. It’s just making small things noticeable and through that momentary change of attention opening up the possibility of noticing and so being physically here now.
Given that you do so much solo work, how does the idea of "collaboration manifest in your creative process?
Collaboration manifests as a great deal of active listening on my part. In Mary Overlie’s Six Viewpoints technique every element of time and space, including what she calls Emotion, Movement, and Story, is important and has its own “language.” Learning to listen to each language in the way that it demands – whether by touch, taste, feel, balance, hearing, or sight – is a never ending practice. In this way almost everything I do or person I meet is some kind of collaboration. I learned early on, in Viewpoints and other performance training like Augusto Boal’s games for Theatre of the Oppressed, that having my own through line to respond with was also essential to the process. Finding that balance, between my through line and the through lines of the things, people, goals, intentions, constraints, and limitations that come together in any physical or social space of interaction, is invigorating for me. It’s listening and being present in the same way that my work and practice attempts to enable a sense of presence. This sense of presence isn’t all peace and joy. Real presence is hard and sometimes even unpleasant, but that’s just the nature of work, isn’t it? I’m still learning. Recently, thanks to Rhizomatic Studio and Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process, I learned how to speak and ask questions in a more collaborative, expansive, and empowering process, something that I did not have a way to practice consistently before. It was eye opening and game changing for me and I’m looking forward to bringing that level of intentional presence in speaking and listening into my practice.
Rehearsing "Samuel Takes A Walk" developed in Rhizomatic Studio's 2018 Performance Lab for The Dancer-Citizen Live 2018: Moving the Map. Photo by the artist.
What would a sustainable career look like for you?
This is a difficult question. I’ve lived too long within the economy of artist gigs, freelance, grant recipient, arts administrator, workshop teacher, adjunct lecturer, install assistant, and volunteer to really have one clear idea of a sustainable career. Perhaps a “sustainable career” for an artist looks like all of the above, with affordable healthcare? What gives me hope is that more independent artists seem to be creating spaces and opportunities for other artists to show, publicize, and make their work. It’s a supportive culture and in some ways a kind of gift economy not measured by money alone. Artist-run collectives, networks, co-ops, residencies, galleries, and venues maybe have existed as long as there have been artists. But the reach and ability to connect with individuals and small groups across large distances and more diverse communities is hopeful to me because it helps me feel less alone, more able to reach out to people and resources, and consequently more able to participate and contribute as well.
I feel the same way. It’s encouraging to see artists helping artists, right? What do you want to see more of in the next decade?
I would like to see independent artists, collectives, and networks doing more of what they are doing now and building a working, sustainable economy in the way that W.A.G.E. (Working Artists and the Greater Economy) are advocating. It’s hopeful to me to see artists working like social entrepreneurs, making the making of social and cultural enterprises – such as teaching-learning centers, food production and distribution, affordable housing, co-working and maker spaces, exhibition and performance spaces – an extension and natural growth of art making as a whole. Coming from a time and place where grants and paying work was highly dependent on corporations, institutions, and government agencies, it’s empowering when I see and know artists who are doing more for themselves and other artists, and doing it with the values and practices they embody in their art making. Presently I’m limited to doing volunteer work, but I try to make this part of my every day reality by making my time available to friends and fellow artists for listening and brainstorming, to talk about production planning and scheduling, figuring out cash flow, how to communicate with organizations and collaborators, and all the other nitty gritty that arts administrators might have to deal with. Lucky for me, I enjoy spreadsheets!
Ha—I love spreadsheets, too! Okay, so, what's on the horizon for you, creatively?
I’m curating ARTCRIB 19, an outdoor group art show for Alice Perreault at Bonehouse Bridge in June. Also in June, I hope to be setting up my Bureau of Thanks, a letter-writing station, for FLOOD artist group’s soundpedro 2019 at Angels Gate Cultural Center in San Pedro. And I’m working on an installation piece for another group exhibition at Claremont Graduate University in the fall or next spring, curated by Rachel Lachowicz.
