Perceptive but underdeveloped
Created by Xie Rong, Daniel York Loh and Beibei Wang, Mountains and Seas – Song of Today 山海 · 今日之歌 is a multidisciplinary performance inspired by Shan Hai Jing 山海经 (The Classic of Mountains and Seas). Drawing on the text’s rich tapestry of myths, beasts and heroes in fantasy alongside folklore and landscape, the production seeks to connect this ancient cosmology to urgent contemporary concerns including the climate crisis, separatism, racism, Islamophobia and political failure.
In fact, the project is thematically intriguing and perceptive, as Shan Hai Jing indeed provides a more cosmological, organic way of thinking that drastically differs from the dialectical Western philosophy that put nature and human in dichotomy. The cosmology of Shan Hai Jing resonates strongly the famous Daoist saying “Heaven and earth are no humane; they treat one thousand things as straw dogs”(天地不仁，以万物为刍狗). Here, nature has its own agency as a self-operating and self- affecting system, other than something firstly to be mastered and resourced, then now to be saved and rescued. In other words, nature itself is immanence, and human beings are within that immanence. In the world of Shan Hai Jing, there exists a myriad of shifting dangers and beings are always negotiating their coexistence – not through conquering, nor exploiting, nor saving. there’s no simple, absolute “one-to-solve-all” answer.
This also speaks to today’s political climate. Islamic people versus Jewish people, Ukrainians vs Russians… Once again, it seems so easy to set clear enemies through nationality, religion or ethnicity, where exactly racism and separatism operate upon. But the true enemy is that frame of mind always seeking for fixed identities and groups that precisely create orders and hierarchies. They find shelters from what exactly oppress them – this is banality of evil. This is everyday fascism. Identity politics is poisonous not because it tells you who you are, but because it kills the possibility of who you could become. From this perspective, what we urgently need, as the dangerous world of Shan Hai Jing suggests, is an acceptance of irreducible immanence and ontological difference.
However, despite its rich thematic ambition, the production is ultimately downplayed by an overtly chopped-up execution. While its interdisciplinary aesthetics sound promising, each element feels tip-toeing. The live painting (Xie Rong) appears trivial with much constrained dance (Tash Tung and Fan Jiayi) at the space of Omnibus; the monologues (brilliantly delivered by Jennifer Lim, though) are bland and preachy, and the guitar riffs lack intensity; most of all, the Peking Opera element (He Song Yuan) feels especially self-orientalist and brushed off. I’m also not fully convinced whether the piece ultimately has a narrative or not. Even if it does not, there still needs to be a backbone upholding all these disparate art forms. That backbone is also missing.
Towards the end, the production raises an intriguing and significant point: stop being kind, stop being unrestrainedly, overflowing, Christian-like kind. This is just weakness. To hate your enemy – the poisonous way of thinking, to fight back. This is, in itself, a provocative and potentially powerful idea. If we are to confront a world contaminated by hatred, separatism, racism, extremism, political vanity and the fascism that runs through the smallest capillaries of everyday life, kindness just worsens the situation. Be affirmative. To imagine. To (re)create. Unfortunately, once again, this idea is only hastily hinted and never given as fully explored.