Chen Tianzhuo @ South Hall, ROHM Theatre Kyoto, Japan

Chen Tianzhuo brought his performing work Ocean Cage to this year’s Kyoto Experiment. This three-hour-long live music and DJ performances are rooted in the intricate yet affective narration in Lamalera village in Indonesia, encompassing the entanglement among the whale, the fisherman and the ancestor. In the interspecies encounter with the sperm whale, the interrelationships of a complex ecosystem and the basis of solidary economic coexistence manifest themselves as well as a spiritual source and connection with the ancestors, interwoven like the links of a chain where a beginning and an end can no longer be determined. Audiences are invited to immerse themselves into the tender, still, afflicted ideological rift, to breathe and dissolve into the porous and leaking bodies of water, mammals, fisherfolk, ballads, breezes and spirits, reconsidering the interdependent relationships across species and how we can (re)understand the more-than-human justice.