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似曾相识 | Dance, in Theater with Window
May 2–July 11, 2026
Slash, San Francisco
Public Programming: May 30th: MOVEMENTS FOR MOVEMENT IN THE EVENT OF BEING MOVED
July 11th: Open Fell
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Exhibition Text
Easily translated as “déjà vu,” 似曾相识 is an idiomatic phrase whose sense in English leans closer to “it is as if we have known each other before”, a literal translation that foregrounds the suggestion of two subjects and their potential relationality. Yet there is a precise ambiguity which suffuses the phrase in Chinese as it holds both conditions, the feeling directed towards a situation or place as in French and that directed towards another person as in English, simultaneously. Dance, in Theater with Window meditates on the slippage of precise delimitations, where the affects of hesitation in such moments open up new permutations for what is given. The syntax of objects gathered offers possibilities to construct certain situations and understandings, but leaves each one on the verge of recognition. Unity coalesces only in a shared desire to become part of the theatrical structure of the room––the wall, the plinth, and the vitrine––those things that tell us where and what to look at. What is framed then, in the space between them, is none other than the orientations of the body that enable us to see as we are told. If art is an orientation of the gaze to a place anew, then art situated in space pulls in a whole other forcefield of sociality to make that happen––the overdetermined choreography of aesthetic experience. The title thus points to this very dance which surfaces during the open hours of the gallery, a performance we don’t see but instead step into. And thus I ask, what are you moved by? Or actually, what is moving you?