Cage is Stage Stage is Cage
Cage is Stage Stage is Cage
Curator: Danny Yung
Short Synopsis:
The origin of Cage is Stage concept dates back to 2007. Danny Yung (the curator) was in Shanghai preparing his Tian Tian Xiang Shang (TTXS) comic exhibition. He came across in a local floral market a traditional Chinese bug box made of red wood. The box is the size of a matchbox. The tiny well-constructed box is used to house small singing bug. Yung was then much inspired by this craft and the concept of how an "artist" captured and performed in such an enclosed cage/stage.
Yung had then traced the whereabouts of the box maker. The craftsman was a retired member of liberation army living in the countryside near Shanghai. Yung redesigned the "cage" and commissioned the craftsman to produce these boxes.
The following years, Yung had invited over 50 friends of diverse backgrounds to join him in the Cage is Stage project. His friends were to use the boxes as stages (or cages) to house their thoughts and expression. The participants include entrepreneur Marjorie Yang of Hong Kong, film maker Jia Zhangke of Beijing, choreographer Lin Hwai-Min of Taipei, theater director Sato Makoto of Tokyo, painter Johnson Chow of Vancouver and dramatist Ping Chong of New York, and the list goes on.
The collaborators were invited to make the box as a message bag, a mirror, a school, a private museum, a time capsule or a personal secret sanatorium. They could fill the boxes with their stories, hopes, worries, questions, concepts, dreams, troubles, plans, despair, philosophy, and so on. More importantly, these boxes would have become a private conversation record between Yung and his friends.
To present these over 50 conversation boxes in an exhibit that would have become a series of conversations with the general public.