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Collaboration and Performance: an Interview with Jane Wang

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Jane Wang is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, and multimedia artist. She curates installation art, musical instrument construction, performance art, and video, among other domains. Wang is a member of the Mobius Artists Group, a Boston-based artist-run organization for experimental art that has provided space for the development and presentation of significant local and international works. During the summer of 2018, she curated and performed in the month-long performance series dadamobile which included dadabloge, a Tristan Tzara-influenced blog. Additionally, Wang’s knit electrical wire sculptures have been exhibited at Mobius, Zeroplan, the NY Fountain Art Fair 2011, Forest, For the Trees, Boston City Hall, the Gordon-Nash Library, and Maudsley State Park.


Chelsea Coon: You are both a composer and a performance artist. How do you describe your practice? What motivates it?

Jane Wang: Truthfully, I would consider myself more of a faux performance artist. In the past, I have explored and experimented with some of the trappings of what I perceive to be performance art. I think more in terms of actions and physical elements and costumes. In general, my work is more project- or opportunity-driven. I develop a work with a particular performance event or set of events in mind. I have also been more interested in curating installations, multi-media work, performances, and blogs than in actually creating works myself. As I get older, I have less and less interest in performing except in rare collaborative instances.

CC: Performing musical compositions has collaborative components to it. How does this work inform the structures of your performance work?

JW: I am not sure that I knowingly differentiate between how I approach composition and performance. As a composer, I collaborate with playwrights, choreographers, and other artists in theatrical spaces or other performance settings. The settings themselves often force a structure and limitation on the work created. Sometimes the person I am collaborating with has a particular overall structure in mind - perhaps a plot or shape or script or score. If I am performing without any collaborators, I often think in terms of the space that I will be performing in. In fact, I can’t think of a piece I created without taking into account where it would be performed. What is the space? What does it sound like? What does the floor feel like? Am I performing for just a camera or for live people in the space with me?

CC: Please describe your most recent performance.  What was the desired outcome? Did you experience shifts in your understanding of the work from beginning to end?

JW: My most recent performance, dadamobile, was one that I didn’t conceive of as a performance piece except in retrospect. I developed and curated it for Mobius, and extended a week-long invitation to a group of guest artists, the Day de Dada Art Nurses. dadamobile turned into a kind of durational performance. It was a month-long set of performances that took place at farmers markets in the Greater Boston area - Davis, Union, Harvard, Copley, and Dewey Squares, as well as SoWa. I rode a cargo bike to each of thirteen events (except for one indoor rain day), at least seven miles round trip. The cargo bike usually arrived at each location with one to three artist passengers or art objects. The first week, it carried a large ragdoll created by Jennifer Kosharek, an artist in Florida whom I had commissioned to create a dada toy that would be given away at the end of the week. The last three weeks of dadamobile, three of the Mobius artists - James Ellis Coleman, Jimena Bermejo and myself - created dada costumes for each of three large black cartoon Snoopy dogs that were free promotional gifts from UNIQLO. These three Snoopy dogs rode with me on dadamobile. Although I was ostensibly the primary organizer and facilitator of the dadamobile events, and a performer in a few of them, the actual trip to and from each location was a performance. I felt that each time I went out on the cargo bike I was a kind of dada emissary.


dadamobile with dadabex (Nathan Andary), June 2018 - photo: Edward Monovich

CC: Which has been your most challenging project you have done to date? Was the challenge related to the structure, the audience, or other factors? Has your understanding of that work shifted over time?

JW: I have had several challenging projects. When I look back, the more challenging projects were ones where difficulties arose due to either breakdowns in communication or an unforeseen hurdle. Currently, in one of my projects, I have questioned from the beginning whether I felt “good” about it, artistically. I could not see a way around doing something somewhat tedious that I had done before, instead of being able to try something new and more exciting to me. I have worked to shift my thinking on that project. Discussing the problem bluntly with my collaborators was helpful, as was a conversation with a fellow composer and friend. Through talking about this problem with them, I realized that other composers had faced similar challenges and frustrations before.

CC: Over the years, you have been an active curator of underrepresented practices and marginalized works of artists at different points in their careers by facilitating and curating numerous events in Boston. How important is curatorial work to you? Do you see your curatorial work as integral to, separate from, or complementary to your creative works?

JW: I feel curating is part of my obligation as an artist in the community and I am thankful that being part Mobius has given me the strength and support to be able to do that. Furthermore, I enjoy curating and co-curating. I do not really see it as separate from my own creative works. It forces me to educate myself about practices outside my limited knowledge, and to collaborate with artists with whom I would not otherwise have the opportunity to do so.

On-going collaborative work in progress with Nathan Andary 2016 - video still: Melanie Hedlund

CC: As artists, do you believe there is a shared responsibility to work together to create more opportunities, access, and support for each other?

JW: Yes, definitely, at least in my case. It is one of the most important parts about being a member of Mobius. Being a part of a collective has pushed me to rediscover disciplines that I had put aside in the past, such as filmmaking and architecture, and discover disciplines which I had never even considered before. I feel happiest when fostering collaboration in my artistic practice.


Wang continues to curate Mobius’ open calls for work, including Signs of Our Times and the Prostitution of Art. She has composed and performed scores for her long-time collaborators, such as performance artist Hanne Tierney, choreographer Nathan Andary, playwright Renita Martin, conceptual artist Jason Hendrik Hansma, and movement artist Liz Roncka. She curated a six-month series in 2012 entitled the art of the UnGrand, and in 2017 organized, co-curated and performed in mobius @Judson Memorial Church in New York City. She received a 2013 Drama Desk Nomination for Outstanding Music in a Play for Hanne Tierney's Strange Tales of Liaozhai, wherein she built and performed on space plates made by Tom Nunn.

About Author

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Chelsea Coon is an artist and writer. Through endurance and duration her works examine: beginnings and endings, phases, and the way in which the body on an elemental level is rooted to space. She has exhibited extensively across North America, Europe, Asia, and Oceania, notably in London, Tokyo and Sydney, among others. Coon is the author of No One Thing is the Root of All Anything: Phases and Performance of the Imminent (NOT A CULT, 2018) and is the Art Director of FUCK ALL Performance Art Festival. She received her BFA (2012, School of the Museum of Fine Arts), MFA (2014, Tufts University), and Certificate of Advanced Studies in Theatre,​ ​Performance​ ​and​ ​Contemporary​ ​Live​ ​Arts (2015, University​ ​of​ ​Applied​ ​Sciences​ ​and​ ​Arts’ ​Scuola​ ​Teatro​ ​Dimitri)​. Coon lives in Los Angeles and Boston.

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