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Merely a Mistake: A Score for your Door

Image collage of performances for Merely a Mistake: A Score for Your Door.
Image collage of performances for Merely a Mistake: A Score for Your Door.

By Irene Hsiao

Created from doors and doorframes from homes demolished during the modernization of Beijing, Liu Wei’s Merely a Mistake II No. 7 is intricate yet intimate in its construction, with an architecture that brings ghosts of former households together, overlapping and interleaving to create a geometrically perfect structure that retains the scratches and marks of use by the individuals who once lived within.

In the original score for a dance inspired by this piece, I was curious to see bodies make contact to build formal and emotional structures together in time and space. Merely a Mistake: A Score for your Door evolved from those principles into an experiment for physical distance. Referring to the score below, participants independently created home videos for this community art project. Afterwards, I watched and paired the videos by matching and contrasting energies. I was astonished and delighted to find that so many different people, distanced in space, time, experience, and knowledge of each other, seemed made to move together—creating spontaneous beauty, humor, shape, rhythm, and joy.

Score

Be still
Divide space
Enter and exit
Open and close
Go back and forth
Go in and out
Knock
Dance
Sit
Leave

Liu Wei, Merely a Mistake II No. 7, 2013, Doors and door frames, wooden beams, acrylic board, stainless steel, and iron. Installation view at Wrightwood 659. Courtesy of the artist Long March Space.
Liu Wei, Merely a Mistake II No. 7, 2013, Doors and door frames, wooden beams, acrylic board, stainless steel, and iron. Installation view at Wrightwood 659. Courtesy of the artist Long March Space.

A Score for your Door is one of several projects developed by Chicago Dancemakers Forum 2020 Lab Artist Irene Hsiao for The Allure of Matter.

With gratitude to Kara Brody, C, Jad Dahshan, Dayquon, Valentina Gómez, JADEN, Lydia Jekot, Allie Koscove, Quyên Lê, Astrid Thiên Ái Lê-Peterson, M, Amanda Maraist, Lucía Márquez, Danielle Meijer, Jeff Montgomery, Jason Pallas, Erik Peterson, Harlan Rosen, Snoop, Pamela Strateman, Catey Sullivan (and Winston, Sweeney Todd, and Major Tom), Amunique Thames, Gregory Valdespino, Kinnari Vora, Keith S. Wilson, Orianna Cacchione, Simone Levine, C.J. Lind, and members of Smart Art + Community Engagement, produced by partnership of the Smart Museum and Chicago Housing Authority.