Michelle Shiu-lin Lai is a Los Angeles based interdisciplinary performance artist whose work transitions between movement, text, and image. Lai investigates the primal poetics of space through a process-based extraction of text through body memory/history, & butoh influenced sensitivity training. Lai recently performed her work in the debut of band Linear Ghost at the Bluewhale, Downtown LA- a collaboration with artist musicians Robert Jacobson, Breeze Smith, Darryl Tewes, & Tim Maher. Lai performed solo work “This Mouth and the Space of Nothing” at A+D Museum downtown LA (2016) and frequently collaborates with a range of artists across different media including film/ video, visual, sculpture, & sound. Lai has created works in performance art trio PO1 with Heyward Bracey and Kio Griffith, presenting a series of multi-media explorations of body, self, time, & identity. She has performed in works at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Hammer Museum, the UCLA Fowler Museum, the John Paul Getty Museum, Hammer Museum, Grand Park, among other institutions and sites in California, the Eastern United States, & in temple ceremony abroad at Junjungan Village, Ubud, Bali. Lai practices architecture and continues to train and perform with Oguri & Roxanne Steinberg’s Venice-based Body Weather Laboratory (2009-present). Excerpts of Linear Ghost @ the Bluewhale: Improvisatory collaboration of artist/musicians: Robert Jacobson: guitar & bulgarian tambura. Breeze Smith: drums. Darryl Tewes: bass. Tim Maher: drums. Michelle Lai: poetry & movement (Michelle Lai performing her original poetic texts: This Mouth & the Space of Nothing & 5 million Dollar Chandelier in a Cave)
A-Stigmatism, Diavolo Brewery, multi-media collab poetic narratvie titled “Stigmatic Mountains: Sleeping Position 2″ by Michelle Lai
The book mentioned in the interview was The Peregrine, here is a link to book The Peregrine by J.A. Baker.
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