Amulet Body
a performance-installation
commissioned by curator Con Gerakaris
4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art
10 Feb - 31 Mar , 2024
Photo of Amulet Body installation by Kai Wasikowski.
Amulet Body (2024) is a performance installation that deconstructs and reimagines systems of divination and sacred-word protection. The work synthesises material symbolism, the body and participatory choreographic methods to expand and loosen imaginative space, thus creating a dynamistic environment. Ho exposes the machinations of divination, suggesting such rituals are not about certainty but rather exist as a system of techniques responding to physical and spiritual patterns in the world.
The central performance of Amulet Body incorporates a set of 150 wooden spindles housing a handwritten note containing a thought, koan of provocation. During the artist’s performance, audience members are encouraged to take a spindle and privately consider the note, either challenging the text or dutifully following the instructions. The spindle is then attached to the artist as she performs a ritualistic procession, assuming the role of a cosmic diviner among a makeshift procession of devoted followers. Amulet Body is a study of divination, an intriguing and complex phenomenon revolving around concepts of belief, faith and intuition, activated during Lunar New Year, a time traditionally associated with rebirth and fortune telling.
Con Gerakaris, Curator for 4A
150 wooden spindles, with a 7 metre length black cotton cord (3.5-4.5 mm diameter) securely knotted and wound around the spindle.
A strip of paper with handwritten text will also be attached to the spindle and wrapped at first under the thread. The texts will comprise a line of poetry or koan by myself and invited contributors, prior to the event.
Adjacent to this formal participatory performance which opens and ends the exhibition, are weekly one-to-one street divination performance sessions held on 17, 24 Feb, 2, 9, 16, 23 Mar from 11.30am to 2.30pm. These take place at Thomas Street about three minutes from 4A Centre, bringing participants into meaningful collaborative interactions through conversations and embodied actions used to disrupt and allow insights to a situation or a question. The main material used are 7 X 2.4m dowels, cut up into different lengths (all different measurements of the cut -up dowels written at the ends with an ink colour associated to the original dowel) and re-constructed back by tying them up with white and black cotton twine.
These sessions, titled Sounds Like Divination was first experimented on the streets of Manhattan, New York in September 2023 as part of a series of public intervention processes shared with artist Dagmar I. Glausnitzer-Smith, after Con Gerakaris approached me to be part of 4A Centre’s group exhibition Year of the Dragon.
