The Monument as Living Memory

Dancer, director, storyteller, and YBCA 10 cohort member My-Linh Le collaborates with new media artist Jeffrey Yip to monumentalize a myth from the future, featuring a commissioned illustration by Kazu Tabu. 

The Origin Story of No Name speaks from the future about the present, and explains how 1,000 years from now people came to speak the same language—one that relies less on the representational system of words and more on the emotional and spiritual resonance of sound, facial, and bodily expression; intuitive understanding; and the creative force inherent in the breath. The myth’s nameless deity is revered in the distant future as the god of communication and prayer. The deity swallows a world made of the buzzwords of our time. Its actions remind us that words can only ever serve as incomplete and unreliable representations that, when entrusted with the task of conveying an objective truth, mirror our distorted and impoverished perceptions of reality. Le and Yip work together to translate the myth using present-day methods of storytelling, including technology such as augmented reality (AR) and projection mapping.