Drawing on Teng’s experience of learning silk magic from a Japanese sensei, Liminal reveals the hidden world and politics of silk, creating poetic metaphors that pierce the illusion of magic.
Through transformations and recurring actions, the performance gradually reveals how illusion is constructed and sustained. What happens when we repeat the same move in a magic trick? Does it become a mundane action in everyday life? How exactly does an ordinary action become magical and otherworldly?
Liminal takes audiences on a journey to explore the ‘in-betweenness’ of the ordinary and the extraordinary, East and West, the visible and the invisible, performance and life, as well as illusion and reality.
Hsiang-Sheng Teng (in Mandarin: 鄧翔生), also known as Shawn, is a London-based interdisciplinary artist and researcher from Taiwan.