“Enclosures II,” a performance art with Martin, two-person exhibition at Ground Round Theatre, The Banff Centre for the Arts, Banff, Alberta, Canada, 1990
When I break through the enclosures,
I find that I am still in the enclosure.
Because disturbance exists for humans,
they make many enclosures for themselves.
It becomes an emblem of their culture
and an emblem of isolation and oppression.
Facing the Great wall, the Paris Bastille Wall and the Berlin Wall:
we understand the isolation between humanity and nature,
individual and an ethnic group, individual and the self:
The price people pay for trying to breakdown the isolation.
We see some of these enclosures but we can not see most of them;
they are so common that they become invisible.
Even if we can break though the enclosures that we see,
we are still not altogether free,
because many enclosures are within our selves.
The confusion resides in the human mind and body.
I hope that one day people can discard these “Enclosures”
– the ones that are inside and outside –
to better comprehend and to awaken the links between
humanity and nature, one person and another,
the person and his or her self.
GU XIONG
1989
Performance