Dakota Guo ~ Keywords: gesture of pricking, pseudo-theory making, corpses of hauntology, place-holding and substituting, (false) etymologies, sewing, juxtaposition and transposition, non-linear causalities, omens are to be taken literally.
Dakota Guo is an artist based in Beijing and Rotterdam. Tailoring her research-based practice into a hybrid of mediums, including performance and video installation, words, objects, and soundscape, she fabricates and (re-)iterates ominous accounts revolving around corpses and their lexical equivalents. Repeatedly, she transposes (false) etymologies and (hollowed-out) symbologies through a gesture of pricking.
Her ongoing research probes the contemporary resurgence of proto-/pseudo-religious activities leaking through the crevices of the Chinese cosmo(necro-)logies of the yin-yang order. She speculates on necrotechnics exercised upon and through corpses as the placeholder for ghosts; and a necroeconomy whose paradigm is yet to be defined.
Dakota holds degrees in Drama and Theatre Arts (BA, Goldsmiths, University of London, 2016), Performance Practice-as-Research (MA, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London, 2017), and Art Praxis (MA, Dutch Art Institute, 2022). Her work has been exhibited in Savvy Contemporary (Berlin, 2022), Times Art Museum (Chengdu, 2021), and Institute For Provocation, Beijing (2019), among others.
Learn more about Dakota Guo's written MA Thesis (DAI, 2022): The Corpse Not In Its Place: Silhouetting A Necroeconomy