Critical Stages (Jun 2021)
Lin Hwai-min’s Water Stains on the Wall: A Cosmopolitical Perspective
Abstract
Water Stains on the Wall is a pivotal example that demonstrates the world-renowned Taiwanese choreographer Lin Hwai-min’s cosmopolitical perspective. This article examines the performance in the context of Lin’s other works and demonstrates how he contests our presumption and consumption of Otherness in the dancescape. Lin highlights the transformative power of calligraphic kinesthesia by engaging with and interrogating a hybrid synthesis of Eastern and Western embodied knowledge, and geo- and body-politics. Water Stains provides a cosmopolitical intervention beyond an Orientalist or globalist framework, as Lin questions the social, cultural, technological, and ideological resonances in today’s global circulation of projected images and desires.
