Abstract
I am drawn to the in-between—to movement at the corners of the eyes, to the moments between one breath and the next. When we want to catch such moments we stand still, we pause, we wait, “with bated breath.” At such moments, I believe, the potential exists for taking on different perspectives and for finding other points of view. Standing still, in a state of stillness, is an action that encapsulates many of my concerns. My work takes form in objects and architecture that collaborate with bodies moving inside them. The space is structured, not as a system, but as a collection of unstable parts, like a kind of precarious machine or puzzle. Standing or moving bodies become part of the spatial and sculptural conversation, as the space responds to their presence, creating a shifting network of small movements and adjustments. I believe that opportunities for change and exchange exist in the accumulation of small displacements and shifts of attention. Through mindful attention and the kind of listening that involves the entire body and all the senses at once, the apparent solidity of the world falls away and we have to find out what things mean again.
DOI
10.5642/steam.20180302.02
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Tseng, Young -
(2018)
"Standing Still – behind the cover art,"
The STEAM Journal:
Vol. 3:
Iss.
2, Article 2.
DOI: 10.5642/steam.20180302.02
Available at:
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/steam/vol3/iss2/2
Author/Artist Bio
Young-Tseng moves between performance and installation art, finding ways to create shifts of perspective through attention to how human beings move and perceive the space around and between each other. His interest in movement, spatial awareness and the inseparability of mind and body comes to him through training in mime in the techniques of both Marcel Marceau and Etienne Decroux's Corporeal Mime, by way of teachers Christina Sergeant in Singapore and Thomas Leabhart in Claremont, California. He is also indebted to the concepts and forms of Suzuki voice and physical actor training as practiced by Anne Bogart and the SITI Company, and the Six Viewpoints technique for composing space and time conceived and developed by Mary Overlie. Young-Tseng holds an MFA in Studio Art from Claremont Graduate University.