Hi Hair Workshop workshop, 2023, The Anderson, VA
On December 2nd, Leilei Xia hosted a tactile workshop about hair in the Anderson, within the exhibition of “Coming Into Contact” curated by Isa Dray. In the workshop, 12 participants paired up and learnt how to say “Hair” to each other, learnt a tactile theatre which imagines being in the sea using hair, and came up with their own tactile theatre piece by improvising on one another’s hair.
“Hi Hair” Creation Process
The first time I thought of doing a workshop about hair was when I was working on a theme in Touch Open Touch. At that time, we drew tarot cards to decide the theme, and the cards we drew were: The Lovers, The Moon, and The Judgment.
During that time my friend Yiqun was also talking about some ideas about hair, and I also started to think about how hair is also a superimposed realm of intimacy and violence - we caress lovers’ hair, but also yank on other people’s hair when we fight. (A frequent scene in movies and TV dramas.) Hair also seems to share a similarity with lovers - hair is connected to us, but we can’t feel it, but the state of our hair very much affects how we look to others; just as we seem to be two people in one mind with our lovers, but you can never fully understand the them, while at the same time being with the lovers, it often and inevitably seems to shape how you look in the eyes of society as well. As for the moon … well, at that time in fact did not think about the moon and hair have anything to do with, but perhaps the moon in the traditional image of the feminine image of the waterfall like moonlight, always let people think and girls hair.
So after I decided to start “doing hair”, I began to study how to feel my hair. Although I play with my hair every day, do I really understand it? I first used the classic raisin meditation method to touch my hair, that is, step by step to approach and feel every part and detail of my hair. I realized that everyone’s hair is actually different, for example, mine is actually quite coarse and scaly feeling, but my roommate’s hair is much warmer. I then started to feel the different sensations that hair can bring and realized that most of the touch actually comes from the touch of our hands and the feeling of our scalp being pulled and touched, after all, touching your hair alone is not really a sensation at all. (If there is a haircut may be comparable to torture, right?) Especially when you touch your scalp through your own hair, you will hear a big intracranial “rustling” sound, like in the desert, like in the field, like in the sea …
Yes, maybe in the sea. That’s the next scene in the tactile drama! If it’s in the sea, then what is the hair? Maybe it could be sea water, or kelp, or maybe the scalp could feel the different landforms, the ridges of the sea. The sensation of dipping your hand into the hair could perhaps be imagined as later in the conversation with Isa Dray, curator of Coming Into Contact, ta suggested that perhaps the hand could touch the forehead as if you were standing on the beach and then stepping into the sea (hair). I thought that was a great idea! If you’re reading this, you might want to give it a try too, you’ll get a sense of flux like that for a really split second.
So I came up with a very short process: a person stands on the beach, walks into the ocean, feels a variety of touches, and then leaves the ocean water. I tested this process on a few different people: my roommate Chrystine, my friends Clore and Huahua in New York, my teacher Hope, and my curator Isa. During the test with Chrystine, we discovered that it was actually a very interesting experience to hold the touched hand and touch the touched hair and scalp, and Clore suggested that the touched hand could lie down. Clore suggested the possibility of having the touched lie down, as holding the hand up all the time can be tiring. The test with Isa made me realize that it is possible for both of us to lie down, head to head, which might give the touched and the touching an inexplicably equal relationship, as well as make the touching more reliant on the sense of touch to carry out the tactile play, and the test with Hope made me realize that the play is actually very humorous! It makes you laugh every time you make it to the end.
With that said, here’s the recipe for this play! —
Hi Hair
Duration: about 1 minute and a half - 2 minutes
Number of people needed: 1 person to be touched, 1 person to be the toucher
Props: Hands
- Line: You stand on the beach｜_Action: Take the touched hand and put it on his/her forehead_. 2.
- Line: You step into the sea ｜Action: Put the touched hand into the hair (if the hair is very short or there is no hair, you can improvise by changing the sea to some other place, including the following lines)
- Line: Let the sea water spread over your feet ｜ Action: Keep the touched hand in the hair, and rub the hair on the back of the touched hand with your other hand.
- Line: Fish swim by｜ Action: The fingers of the touching hand cross the scalp of the touched person, you can interpret the movement of the fish, either fast or slow, and you can add some sense of movement.
- Line: The kelp dances ｜ Action:
- lines: You feel the sand beneath you feet rustling
- lines: You walk away from the sea
- lines: along with a little crab
- crawling into a sand hole
