HOOI-YING ASH ZHANG 张海莹








   COLLECTIVE LONELINESS


When You’re Strange


Type:     Performance
          Poem

Duration: 7:15 min

Location: Booijmans op Zuid

Year:     2023



Read:   When You’re Strange   
Watch:  When You’re Strange



When You’re Strange is a performance in which Hooi-Ying invites the audience to read parts of a poem in sequence creating an auditory experience, after which they performed a dance piece.

In the poem Hooi-Ying honestly and vulnerabily reflects on their own loneliness. Through a collective reading, they tried to extend the ideas beyond the individual and invite others to add their own experience through their reading. The dance piece is an extension of the poem and the togetherness created by the collective reading.

This performance is an active research in which Hooi-Ying explores loneliness through the collective. What loneliness and love mean outside of a linear time frame or conventional labels. Through this research Hooi-Ying wants to create spaces where vulnerability and openness help to connect people.