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How about Unkraut
Type
Interdisciplinary Artistic Research
Format
Lecture performance, interactive art installation
Year
2021, 2022
Creative Process
The project began with my experiences of migration and cultural displacement, alongside observations of how my own body and behaviour changed when moving between different social and cultural environments. Using weeds as a conceptual framework, I explored everyday responses to things perceived as unfamiliar, disruptive, or out of place.
Actions such as cleaning, removing, controlling, caring for, or reorganising became ways of examining how social and cultural values are embodied through everyday behaviour. These observations were translated into storytelling, bodily actions, everyday gestures, and interactions with objects.
The first version, developed in Berlin in 2021, took the form of a lecture performance. In 2022, the work was further developed in Kassel with Yu-Ching Huang, introducing interactive installations that extended the performance into the surrounding space and invited the audience to physically engage with the work.
Format
lecture performance, interactive art installation
Dimensions / Scale
1. Lecture Performance: The artist integrates storytelling and bodily expression to explore immigrant identity and cultural clashes. 2. Interactive Art Installation: The audience experiences visual and sensory connections related to the project’s themes.
Presentation History
2021
How about Unkraut
Lecture Performance
APAL Residency Program Edition III
RING Theater, Berlin, Germany
3 October 2021
2022
How about Unkraut – In Defense of Nature’s Most Unloved Plants
Lecture Performance / Interactive Art Installation
KulturFenster, Kassel, Germany
5 August 2022
Artistic team
Artistic Director and Performer: Po-Fu Wu; Co-Creator and Director: Yu-Ching Huang.
hashtag
#ImmigrationAndCulture #InterdisciplinaryArt #LecturePerformance #InteractiveArt #WeedMetaphor
Link 1
How about Unkraut uses weeds as a metaphor to examine the friction between individuals and society, as well as between old and new cultures. Drawing from my migration experiences and family histories, the project reflects on how individuals negotiate identity, belonging, and adaptation within changing cultural environments.
Inspired by Richard Mabey’s Weeds: In Defense of Nature’s Most Unloved Plants, the work considers weeds not simply as unwanted plants, but as organisms whose existence is defined by their relationship to a particular environment. From a queer and migrant perspective, this becomes a way of questioning who or what is considered out of place, and how resistance, adaptation, and coexistence are shaped by social and cultural norms.
