Kailin Xu

Year of birth: 1998.
Where do you live: London. 
Your education: MFA Spatial Performance and Design at Architectural Association School of Architecture.
Describe your art in three words: Interprofessional, Connection, Esotericism.
Your discipline: Interdisciplinary art.
Website | Instagram

Your performance “404 Reading Club” combines literature, video, sound, material, and body movement. Can you elaborate on how these elements come together to create a ‘spiritual connection’ with the audience?

Divided into four chapters, the performance, titled ”reading event”, take this “reading” starting from literature and progressively incorporating new media such as spatial sounds, imagery, flowing symbols, and body movements. With these media, the audience experiences an interactive process of emotional shifts in the “reading”, ultimately achieving “Nonverbal Communication” experiment through this performance.

What was your primary inspiration for exploring ‘hidden communications’ in your work? Are there specific historical events that influenced this project?

This project began with my observation of the plight of people who have lost the right to speak out under the authority of the government since the Covid Pandemic period. However, I also discovered on the internet that when people are unable to express their accusations in their native language, they use a reworked language as a hidden communication method to avoid the censorship of official ideology.  In my research, ’Book clubs’ also had a special political significance in many eras. During the White Terror in Taiwan,   there were many people secretly organizing book clubs to fight against the authority and official consciousness by reading.  There were similar book clubs in China during the Cultural Revolution. At the same time，The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768, Witch-hunting in Salem, McCarthyism also gave me inspiration.

Kailin Xu | 404 Reading Club | 2024

How did your background in fashion design influence the spatial and visual design of your performance projects, including “Partita” and “404 Reading Club”?

I think my background in fashion design has made me aware of the diverse possibilities of shaping the human body. When appying this exploration to performance art, I consider the relationship between the body, movement and the space. Like in the “404 Reading Club”, I covered the costumes with the cipher I designed, and combined them with projections to create a effect of words flowing from the human body into the space and audience. Additionally, my knowledge of materials and techniques during fashion courses has equipped me with the ability to reshape the body through clothing or wearable installations, which I intergrate into performance production.

Could you explain the concept of the ‘coded language’ in “404 Reading Club”? How did you create this secret language, and how is it used during the performance?

Inspired by the secret communication ways in the history, I want my project to resonate with the audience through a “coded” approach. I consider all kind of media as language, which can be read, and I want them to convey the information and emotions in the scenarios I create. In addition to using sound, imagery, and body movements as “languages,” I created an actual cipher for this project. It is based on the rules of the Pigpen Cipher  and combines the design of witchcraft symbols. At the same time, I made it possible to be typed on PCs so that it can actually be used by people. Through this approach and design, I hope to convey a positive signal to people that even if we can’t express what we want to say with the offical language, there are still many ways we can connect with each other.

Kailin Xu | 404 Reading Club | 2024

You mentioned that audience participation is a key element in your performances. How do you guide the audience into transforming their perspectives and identities during the process?

Audience Participation is crucial in making this performance complete. When I was working on this project, I aimd the audience not only watch but also to have a real sense of engagement. To achieve this, I designed the performance in a way that break the boundary between performers and audience, making the audience become a part of the performance itself. The reading material papers people read plays a critical role in their transformation of the audience’s identity, working both as the material to be read and became into the stage itself by the audience under certain guidence. Thus the identity of the audience is transformed from the “spectator” to the “participant” in this “reading”, or the “ritual”.

The interdisciplinary nature of your work is quite fascinating. How do you approach integrating architecture, sound, and theatre into your multimedia performances?

I think it’s the establishment of a mindset that combines the way to connect people in different fields, and the combination of skills from different fields to create a diverse sensorial experience. My experience at architecture school made me aware of the impact of space on the audience’s perceptual and emotional response, and my study of fashion made me focus on establishing the body’s role in space. In sound, I enjoy exploring ways to introduce the audience to a more three-dimensional sensory world through audio effects, music and ambient sound, while theatre provides the narrative structure and emotional connection to the audience for my multimedia creations.

Kailin Xu | 404 Reading Club | 2024

Your performance touches on both visual and auditory senses. Do you believe that performance art has the power to communicate in ways that go beyond verbal language?

I think it is. Humans don’t need language to communicate in the beginning, and children don’t need language to express emotions. The conveying of information and feelings doesn’t depend wholly on a specific language. There is a Chinese idiom called ‘心照不宣’, which means that when people have the same feeling, they can understand each other’s meaning without speaking, and I think this is the same case with performance art. Performance art can use much more media than verbal language, and as we engage more senses such as vision, sound, touch and so on, it can establish information and communication that will transcend the boundaries of culture and language.