By Tina Wang and Tianjiao Wang
The Old Tai and Beijing Shichahai (老太和北京什刹海) is an artist duo formed by Tina Wang and Tianjiao Wang. They are interested in important yet often overlooked qualities in the art world, such as the courage to be generous to others and not feel taken advantage of, the question of how to sustain one’s practice within a nourishing environment, and how to make art in a healthy way. They are willing to invest deeply in these concerns. Their work seeks to resist oppression in contemporary life and to foster better expression, storytelling, and sharing. “The Old Tai” comes from Tina’s long-standing artist name, 太太, modified with an adjective for a desire for the wisdom that comes from becoming older, while Beijing Shichahai refers to Tianjiao’s desire to root her identity in her hometown of Beijing.
Tianjiao Wang is interested in acknowledging the presence of things. Through photographing and filming, she anticipates drawing others closer, while simultaneously keeping them perpetually within the realm of the other—without crossing boundaries, without encroachment, without fusion.
TAITAI +/-/x/÷Tina makes perverse dioramas with organic materials in all states of their solidity to emphasize the malleability, humor, and fragility of the human condition. Her ecosystem of movement research for performance that leads to object making (film, photo, and ceramics), which is fed back into the installations, guides her practice.
Tina Wang: Why have you recently become interested in performance?
Tianjiao Wang: It might be because the medium of performance shares many connections and similarities with the filmmaking I’m doing—they both invite the audience, as a collective, to share a period of time together, one that is durational and demands attention. So, the reason I’m inviting you to work with me on this performance is to use the act of doing to gain a more panoramic understanding of a certain unfolding. But I especially want to collaborate with you because I’m reminded of scenes with two female leads in film and television—most directly, Bergman’s Persona (1966)—and the energy that arises between two women. I believe performance, as a medium more immediate than film, offers us a lot of space to explore. I’m curious about something you mentioned before—you described my film as having a certain atmospheric quality in relation to space. You said that’s something you’ve been pursuing in your own practice recently; you also mentioned that it feels like our practices are somehow crossing paths. Can you elaborate on that? What about my work that made you feel this resonance?
Tina: Mhmm! Yes, your videos bring forth this installation quality that I am pursuing in my work with foam and paraffin wax. Maybe this is the perfect time for this collaboration of exchanges in media. Even though perhaps you would not call your work installation, the work that you screened at Roman Susan where viewers sit with the imagery of a landscape that is both familiar and unfamiliar to us feels like one. It is familiar because I have seen trees and been on hikes. But it is unfamiliar because I have not been explicitly to that exact scene you have. The slow speed at which the video moves gives me agency as a viewer, and space and time to take it in and feel.
Tianjiao: In the film Fall 塌, I believe I continued an interest of mine—the idea that the act of viewing can be one of absorption. This state of absorption can act like a catalyst: you might find yourself in resonance with the protagonist, or with the ladybug in their hand, a falling leaf, or the sunset over the Indiana Dunes…The interplay between text and image, and the subtle discrepancy between information and affect, have always been my sources of inspiration. But in Fall, what interests me is the intertextuality between human presence and landscape, or perhaps the refusal to let the human figure be the sole protagonist. The landscape, too, can take a leading role, occupying space with authority, allowing a reciprocal energy to move through the film. From another perspective, I feel that the presence of the characters I’m interested in also becomes fluid in this film. I’m still exploring this aspect, something like the energy connected to a film, and the kind of capacity or state a person brings home with them after watching it.
Tina: I am with you, making work that can create a world in which people can see and feel themselves in, but is it unfamiliar enough to push their total understanding? Against the strict functions and associations that people, places, and things have in our lives? But I also wonder about my own biases. Perhaps I am still stuck in a specific binary framework of value placement- familiar/unfamiliar, slow/fast, boring/interesting. I make decisions to try to remain in an “in-between” state, but still feel caught in it. What is moderation? There’s a certain pressure of not wanting to be too boring or too interesting. If it is too boring or interesting, it does not allow that kind of absorption you are talking about. In that way, I sense a tremendous, perhaps misguided, sense of responsibility.
Having worked as a performer for others for more than a decade now, I have been in many types of processes. Even if the process of a performance is somatic-based and slower, inevitably, there is a quickening and hardening against the gaze of the viewer. Maybe there is a fear of being boring. Like you said, I am sharing time with my viewers, and I want to be generous. I hope for absorption also, not just what I am doing, but a weaving together of one’s attention and associations of what is happening. Perhaps it’s a shared curiosity? Compared to me, I sense you have less pressure in showing your video works. I feel like I can take the time I need and project myself into them.
Even though I made the “transition” from dancer to performer then visual artist, using the body is still such an important start to my process. I touch my face on a wooden floor and feel support. I sink into a soft pillow and feel my neck ache. And I see myself wanting to recreate a variety of associations of “comforts” for an audience member in an art setting. Do you feel that way when making? Or do you have certain goals/ideal states for your viewers?
Tianjiao: In past screening experiences, I’ve sometimes felt an unprecedented level of nervousness or pressure when showing my film to just one individual. That feeling probably stems from being too self-aware—either because I know exactly what I’m doing in a particular film, or, on the contrary, because I’m acutely aware of my own uncertainty about something. I get anxious about how they might respond. But in a conventional cinema setting, surrounded by complete darkness, it’s different. Maybe the darkness helps—I’m half joking, but maybe it really does. I don’t know who’s sitting in the audience, but I’m also sitting among them. I become part of the audience. I feel comfortable. In those moments, I’m no longer the maker. I especially felt that way with red bean. I was able to simply enjoy watching it.
When I first read Nathaniel Dorsky’s description of how watching a certain film can make one feel healthy, it immediately resonated with me, because that’s exactly how I’ve felt after seeing the work of many contemporary filmmakers I adore. It’s not necessarily a sense of healthy because the film is hopeful, uplifting, or even gentle, but because the combination of medium, technique, and message comes together in a way that makes one feel whole or well.
I was quite surprised that you used the word “comforts”, because I might have thought of safety instead. I can see how your work constantly engages with familiar things in unfamiliar ways, but for me, unfamiliarity doesn’t necessarily bring comfort. I’m not sure if what you’re referring to is more accurately described as emotional comfort. Or perhaps it’s the second half of the sentence—“in an art setting”—that you were emphasizing?
Tina: Healthy! I had never thought of that, but perhaps that is what I am thinking of too. Contemporary society asks us to fragment and compartmentalize so much of ourselves, our senses, desires, goals, and the ability to be generous. Seeing a work that can let a person feel absorption (as you mentioned before) is perhaps what I mean by comfort. I don’t expect my audience members to feel comfortable seeing my work. Most of the time, as you have alluded to, there is a feeling of unease and lack of safety.
In my performances, I see myself creating these microcosms of the insane things we do to try to make our lives feel meaningful in contemporary society. I put excess and mess on display because to me, that is the calibration, an in-between state in trying to work through an idea to a final product. We are often asked to either justify the end because of the means or the means for the ends. Perhaps like all the attempts of other artists to queer categories and binaries, I want to queer our definitions of finish, polish, success, finality, and achievement. Things are messy and ambiguous but always visceral in my work because that is something we don’t see much or think of as positive or even productive in the world.
That being said, I also do believe in the need to not just do what gratifies one’s senses. I think that is what is pushing me to make work beyond performance. I have such pleasure in non-verbally showing the gamut of emotions I feel when I encounter something hard (tile) versus something soft (melted wax) as I world-build these performative dioramas. But how do I keep inviting different types of audiences in? How do I also restrain myself in the work to create more contemplative experiences?
The body is not always moving but is always being put on display, asking to be judged in some way. But can its complicated and contradictory “moves” be translatable into an art “object” and retain its mobility? I think and wonder about stillness a lot. How do you make decisions about stillness and motion as you go into the editing suite? Do you find yourself guided by intuition for the most part? Are there moments that you didn’t but felt happy about the outcome?
Tianjiao: Sometimes the process feels like hunting—there’s an element of luck involved. But when the camera captures a certain moment, I immediately know I’ll use that shot. That said, there are also times when I get strong footage, but end up letting it go because it doesn’t fit into the flow of the film.
Fall was the first film where I entered the editing suites without having gathered all the footage I had originally imagined. That decision was also intuitive—I just knew that what I had shot so far wasn’t enough to fully form a film. I started editing partly because there was an opportunity for the Roman Susan screening test, and I wanted to try out the experience of both working on and showing a work-in-progress. But that process gave me new insight into the material. It was also in the editing suite that I realized the landscape had gradually started to stand out more than the main character.
I appreciate what you said about “not just doing what gratifies one’s senses.” When I first encountered those durational structuralist films, they felt like a direct counter to conventional viewing rhythms—many of them, to me, were about endurance and reshaping the viewer’s patience. Lately, I’ve been exploring whether a durational film could slow down someone’s metabolism, rather than being long for the sake of being long.
This ties into my thoughts on stillness and motion—not just in terms of visuals, but also conceptually and technically. It’s about how these elements work together to create a particular viewing experience, something that ultimately serves the audience.
Tina: I am now thinking about a recent rejection email from a reputable foundation that compiled the jury’s notes with the help of AI, and a comment that stood out was this: “The intention is clear, but the community impact could be described more directly.” Here we are talking about internal intentions and desires, but of course, there is so much hope for external understanding. I know all the cliches about not depending on one comment or feedback from one organization, but outside of graduate school or group critique settings, how does one know or gain data points to measure that translation from intention to reaction? And how does one trust the feedback of the viewer? I am grateful to you for trusting me and look forward to making this performance with you.
Performance proposal: Our desire to collaborate comes from Tianjiao’s curiosity: can an artist who has always performed independently find a kind of equilibrium when working with someone else, remaining true to themselves while allowing another person to coexist through forms of collaboration, support, or simply presence? Our tentative title centers around the idea of undomestication. Tina has developed a body of work called ‘How to domesticate Tina’ that takes the form of a video and live performances.
Tianjiao will use choreographed poses by Tina to make her body resemble unstable, unreliable pieces of furniture for Tina to interact with. These interactions can be physical or verbal. But because each of my poses can only be held for a limited time before collapsing, Tina will have to find the next “piece of furniture” to engage with.
Since Tina has historically performed non-verbally, her act of domestication will be to verbalize poems of fitting in as she tries to receive support from Tianjiao’s untrained body. The collaboration pushes up against the line between suffocation and support in questioning how to still find belonging as both parties fail at their tasks together.