Scripted memory at the border, boundary, and edge ~ by Echo Guo

Echo Guo's "Scripted memory at the border, boundary, and edge" was presented before live audience at Centrale Fies, Dro, Italy on August 8, 2025 as one of 24 acts, (curated by Elisa Giuliani) at the occasion of the AEROPONIC ACTS 2025: CHOREIA (convened by Gabriëlle Schleijpen).

Here you will find an introduction by the presenter, video-documentation filmed by Baha Görkem Yalım and a written report by Grant Watson.The report includes a summary of the spoken, improvised comments by esteemed guest respondents Barby Asante, Sandi Hilal, and Zairong Xiang.

Scripted memory at the border, boundary, and edge

Echo's question: How do we meet on the edge? 

Echo's intro: 

A multimedia happening includes visual material from daily
archives (and virtual imagination), sound design and recording,
with traces left for the chance of activation on the spot.

A call between two friends—one from China and one from Taiwan—
chatting about memory and border. Border here relates to the line
that divides nation-states, the boundary that separates people, the
edge that conditions the body. Calling is how they maintain a
relationship and cultivate a possibility to cross the many borders in
between.

Sit in a pool of narrative, with needles under the seat.

Poke!

Grant's report: 

The stage is set with a projection on the back wall and a series of paper objects on the floor. The projection features two circles with images of skin, rotten fruit, animals, cityscapes, and graphic motifs. There is a soundtrack of two people talking, their tone intimate and intense, they seem to be friends engaged in conversation. They discuss alopecia, the sudden loss of hair, and question what triggers this autoimmune condition and if it is psychological. They discuss the feeling of being enclosed, as during the Covid lockdown in Shanghai in 2022. On screen, attention turns to the border between China and Laos, and a fence running between the two which blocks the passage of people and animals; meanwhile on the stage, performers begin to manipulate the paper objects. The image becomes full screen and we see the wild elephants who live along the border being photographed by tourists. One of the narrators describes the experience of being trapped inside the stomach of an elephant. The performers on the stage seem to be sewing the paper, we hear it rustle as they work, onscreen there is a prick of blood and a person pulling hair from their scalp. What if war breaks out? one of the voices asks, referring to a possible conflict between China and Taiwan, and we guess that the friends are from these two countries. Military preparations, drills, nautical manoeuvres in the Taiwan Strait. The outbreak of war and genocide in different parts of the world. The experience of racism, the rise of xenophobia. Are these overlapping forms of aggression normalising a state of emergency? they ask. Is a sense of crisis becoming normal? How does this relate to the edge of physical experience, the border, the body?

Barby Asante thanks the artist for a sensitive work and she references her own research on racism and the body. She is struck by the relation, between the human body, the more than human body, and state borders, which is suggested by the work. She is interested in how bodies hold and articulate trauma. She appreciates that a discussion of the covid pandemic was evident in the work, which runs counter to an expectation that society should adapt and return to normality. The circular images projected on the screen remind her of keyhole surgery, which gives the work an intimate feeling, but also made her cringe. She appreciates the device of two friends speaking across a rupture, that we don’t know what this rupture has in store. But also the tender moments where food and laughter are brought in.

Zairong Xiang congratulates the artist on a courageous work that he finds wonderful at many levels. He notes how the border has been a topic for many years related to a discussion of the colonial and gendered operations of modernity. He appreciates that the work does not only remain in the critical mode but finds ways to be dark, humorous and visceral, to poke at the border, through sound and image, and holes gives us hope, even if this is fragile. The elephants in the work speak to a particular moment in Shanghai but also to the elephant in the room (the issue of China and Taiwan). Zairong throws back the question- what is the elephant in the room in terms of that geopolitical tension?

Sandi Hilal finds the work to be beautiful and enjoyed every second of it. She appreciates how different topics are addressed through the format of a conversation. How it speaks to the condition of being on the edge, how the border is a condition of precarity. The work shows how the subject of the border can range from the human body to the condition of animals. The presence of live performers on stage speaks to the entanglement of the personal and the collective. She thinks that the work also addresses a tendency in the west to only speak about the self. Coming from the Palestinian context, she is touched deeply by the metaphor of the elephant in the room. Her caution is that the personal position of the artist is lacking. Specifically in relation to the border. That in the context of Israel/Palestine this would be a huge issue, a friendship would be reliant on knowing someone’s position, for example on the right to return.