TRANCEFACIAL
"My father passed away, and I missed his funeral"
(2025)
A series of Mobile Grief Temples, containing situated installations and performances, on disappearance, displacement, and resilience. A research process of embodied epistemic inference. Concept, sound, performance, installation, text by Dan Su. Materials from this series are recycled or reused from local areas. Supported by Gwaertler Stiftung.
excerpts
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[TF3.0]
"On raining days, my mirror looks bigger"
The third chapter of TRANCEFACIAL unfolds by the sea, where water becomes a co-creator, eroding the boundary between technological ruin and organic transformation. The motion of the waves becomes a generative force — dissolving, renewing, and re-inscribing the sound-driven body.
TF3.0 GRAEF
I am reborn the moment of liquid flooding its bounds.
Dead cells run down from my torso
while seawater seeping into my shoes.
Softly we exchange,
holding, bursting tears, spreading outwards,
into a universe I seem to have dreamt before,
yet now so real.
I can touch it with the tips of my fingers
that are touched by the ever-becoming land.
A moment equal to thousands of years waiting.
Until all greens turn metal-hard,
all electrons go wireless,
I seek the last follower in the ocean desert.
On raining days, my mirror looks bigger.
Yet it is disappearing.
The multimillions of counterfactuals live on.
[TF3.0] was co-created with the sea. A single cut-open metal tube was placed in the sea. During the performance it was wrapped by the bandage that was hand drawn, partially burnt and dyed with Yunnan Puer tea. Grass, edible pigment, and soil on LED screen was dragged through sand, eroded by the waves, and at the same time bleeding into the sea. Wearable sound system (hidden in the costume) with flying drone interweaved together with the oceanic sound.
TF3.0 PERFORMANCE
[TF3.0] was enacted on the coastline of Daya Bay, Huizhou China on December 28th 2025.
Residency at E-M Space (Daya Bay).
December 12th-December 28th.
Assistance by Xiaoxiao Fan and causal_noise.
Drone operation by Yuanchun Lu.
Camera by Huangsheng and Mark.
With support from Dayawan Xiayong Subdistrict Cultural Station China.
Life is the flower of death.
Death is the beginning of life.
Chinese text:
坐标霞涌｜山海之间的一场艺术实践
2025年12月28日下午4:30，艺术表演和展览《TRANCEFACIAL: Mobile Grief Temple [3.0]》于惠州霞涌小径湾沙滩呈现。作品由常驻柏林的跨学科艺术家 Dan Su（su dance110）创作，是其场域特定系列的第三章节。此前，该系列已分别在德国基尔与意大利米兰完成呈现。本次则首次走出室内环境，在山、海、城市交汇的环境中展开, 是一次在自然与公共空间中的场域性介入实践。表演向当地居民及来到沙滩的游客提供了一次近距离的艺术体验，并引发对身体、技术与自然环境关系的思考。活动在霞涌街道办及其下属文化站、小径湾沙滩管理处的支持下顺利完成。
本次艺术实践亦是 Dan Su 在 E-M Space（大亚湾独立文化与艺术组织）驻地期间的重要成果。经由对广东海岸线的考察，团队最终选址于惠州霞涌镇华润小径湾铂金沙滩，既源于惠州古今文化的兼容性，也基于其独特而丰富的山海自然条件。
艺术家以 “认知虚构” 为其创作核心概念，通过行为表演、可穿戴声音系统与艺术装置，与自然环境共同构成一场仪式。表演中，艺术家拖行一块被科技社会遗弃的电脑屏幕，缓慢穿越沙滩人群，在地面留下拖拽的痕迹；屏幕上生长着植物与滋养它们的泥沙。随后，艺术家靠近一件由整根钢管切割而成、竖立于海中的装置，短暂停留后入水。随着海浪的拍打，绿草与深色泥沙流入海中，海水被染上大地的色彩。艺术家以经普洱茶染色、灼烧与手绘处理的绑带，对金属结构进行缠绕。最终，艺术家静静站立于被缠绕后的装置与被海水冲刷的屏幕旁望海远观，全程由无人机跟踪。
作品中的钢管、绑带与电子设备等材料在《TRANCEFACIAL》系列中反复出现，并在不同场域中不断转化。本次章节中，海水成为作品的共创者之一，见证材料在有机环境介入下的变化，以及由此引发的关于蜕变、新生与未来的想象。
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[TF2.0]
"Fire, burnt R's work"
The second chapter of TRANCEFACIAL echoes Hermann Broch’s The Death of Virgil. The installation is suspended between destruction and preservation. Wrapped metal structures reappear as spatial anchors for the ritual of belief updating, with burnt fragments from Dan Su’s poetic fiction 7-3-R One Day Flight. Language collapses into sonic signal, into ruins, and the body becomes ordeal. Temple [TF2.0] is activated through live performance with Brazilian artist Aun Helden.
TF2.0 GRAEF
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TF2.0 BELIEF UPDATE1
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TF2.0 BOUND-w/ sound system
Our lights and shadows are crossed,
through the open and sealed scar,
still burning,
turning inwards.
The sound of belief updating cannot wash away all the pain.
[TF2.0] was activated through a performance with lights encountering the shadows. A single cut-open tube was placed in a dark room during the performance. Doubled minds were talking to each other through a slow balanced dance. The one with inverted nail jacket opened the other's back, revealing the red under the metal structure. The structure then was wrapped by the hand drawn and partially burnt bandage. The clicking sound of the inscribed lighters triggered further feed-backing noise through the action of lighting the already burnt poems on paper.
photo © Lars Larkin
TF2.0 PERFORMANCE
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TF2.0 BELIEF UPDATE2
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photo © Lars Larkin
Exhibition part of "Burial Jar" at Lusvardi Art, Milan, Italy.
September 28th - October 18th.
Performance on September 26th.
Camera by Flavio Degen and Lars Larkin.
Curated by Alessandro Rauschmann.
Press by PESSIMA Art Magazine.
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[TF1.0]
"I lost my feet in the screen"
Hovering between digital inscription and the living body, a vertical, tower-like structure which is wrapped in drawn glyph bandages and anchored by a slow-morphing facial video, is staged as a haunted interface. Located at a half emptied shopping mall CAP, Kiel, Germany, the installation unfolds as a ritual site for unstable memory, sonic mourning, and embodied transformation.
TF1.0 DRAWINGS
[TF1.0] started with ink drawings as extended writing practice that carried ancestral intuition. It then transformed into digital media, spatial and performative, anchored in grief.
The digital video is based on 33 drawings that slowly morph into one another. The transitions are barely recognizable without trance-like, hypnotic attention.
The installation is a structure that transmits post-human mourning and ancestral data, hybridizing drawn glyph bandages, metal racks, digital media, and soil.
TF1.0 GRAEF
TF1.0 PERFORMANCE1
Performance1 activated the mourning site through embodied sonic memory. After the act of wrapping the towel, the soft drawn bandage was transferred from the body, and remained suspended. Non-linear memory unfolded through acousmatic sonic atmospheres (with sound system hidden behind the curtains), gestures, relational movement, and invented vocals as a dialogue with the memory.
Performance2 on the closing date unfolded as a durational somatic recursion: a hybrid morphing, living sculpture that reconfigures temporal perception. The performance challenged the threshold of two different realities: the outside consumption oriented public space and the inside invented mourning space, loosely connected through the bandage, amplified as an error like glitch. (performance filmed with 360 camera)
TF1.0 PERFORMANCE2
photo © Alessandro Rauschman
Exhibition part of "Reality Glitch" at Lusvardi Art Milano satellite space Kiel.
May 28th - July 25th.
Performance1 on May 28th.
Performance2 on July 25th.
Curated by Alessandro Rauschmann.