We are happy to announce Mei Long Bao as our next resident artist in 2024.
Mei Long Bao (they/them) is a Danish-Chinese activist, performer, dance artist, musician and producer based in Berlin. They have worked as a drummer/vocalist in the band Felines with several European tours and album releases; and as a performer/drummer/vocalist in the activist art group GP&PLS. Their work is deeply rooted in the in-betweens, both as interdisciplinarity and neverending translation between artistic expressions, but likewise as the situatedness of identity, as non-binary, Chinese-Danish (colonised-coloniser), working class-academic, and amateuristic punk perfectionist monk. Mei’s current artistic practice entails performing in works by other choreographers, teaching traditional Chinese movement practices, making soundscapes for dance pieces and working on their own artistic work based on the Chinese straight sword.
In their time during the residency at Flutgraben Mei is working on ‚dull blade, keep sharpening‘: ‘dull blade, keep sharpening’ (working title) is a practice-performance centered around the straight sword in Chinese martial arts. A work in progress/digress, it inquires into the in-between of sword and practitioner. “I use the sword as a prosthesis, modifying my body, detachable and pointing at something I lack. I use the sword as a tool, to focus or think. The sword can be a symbol, of power or phallos, of violence or equilibrium. I practice the sword as a discipline, a work of becoming, a form that transforms. I view the sword as an object of metal and wood, erect, hard and malleable.”