Wu Tsang. Photo: Gina Folly, courtesy of Schauspielhaus Zürich
Wu Tsang
PROJECT
Like George Bizet’s opera, Wu Tsang’s reimagining of Carmen centres on the performative worlds of flamenco and bullfighting, where death becomes spectacle. These cornerstones of Andalusian culture both place mortality centrestage, implicating the viewer in ritual. As a Spanish Romani woman, Carmen experiences multiple forms of marginalisation – racial, gender and class-based – and is bound to a tragic fate. With its spatial audio, the film evokes a sense of impending horror. Yet unlike Bizet’s opera, Tsang’s work suggests a possible escape from Carmen’s tragic destiny.
ABOUT
Wu Tsang received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2004 and an MFA from the University of California at Los Angeles in 2010. Tsang is a MacArthur ‘Genius’ Fellow, and her projects have been presented at international biennials, film festivals and museums including MoMA and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (US), Tate Modern, London (UK), and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (the Netherlands). Recently Tsang worked in residence at Schauspielhaus Zurich as a director of theatre with her collective Moved by the Motion.