Friday 11 July 2025, Beijing, Zhao Ziyi 赵子毅 at Aloe on-site #22
Owing to the positively fictitious quantity of letters arriving in the mail room, it has come to the attention of The Sine Revue that some of our subscribers are concerned about even an appearance of impropriety regarding a certain bias in this fine publication’s coverage of musical entertainments. In order to assuage these very understandable concerns, the editorial board has judged it appropriate that our correspondent preface this edition’s review with the following exculpatory statement:
Your humble correspondent in Beijing diligently attends a number of concerts in the capital, at a range of different institutions and events, such that the reader may be surprised to learn that, though the greater share undoubtedly belongs to the so-called experimental style, this predilection has not at all entailed the exclusion of other traditions that live on in and to some extent live off this great City. Yet the trend is, nevertheless, there, and I am told certain astute readers have noticed that a preponderance of this column’s reportage covers concerts presented by the Aloe on-site series. Your humble correspondent wishes to assure the readership, therefore, that he is not on the payroll of Aloe Records, and, moreover, that the frequent appearances of their events in these pages reflect nothing other than the coincidence of those most wondrous of performances with a particular configuration of geographical and curatorial coordinates. It is my sincere wish that, over time, the law of averages will save the day and remedy this rather unfortunate embarrassment.
In this land, for those who belong to the same generation as I, as well as those who come after, jiggling is a pastime which at times seems to border on the ubiquitous. And on those occasions that it appears in, or indeed is aestheticised into, performance, it is an indication that prepares me for the underwhelming act that is soon to follow. Nevertheless, the first head presented by Zhao Ziyi not only inaugurated a full-blown jigglecore performance, it also effected a transformation of the quotidian into the quite frankly sublime, all the headiness of the descending firmament.
Black head of hair shimmers white under white stage light; imagine a head-sized planet a spherical plain of undulating silvergrass. Tuft of very fine blades, razor sharp, metallic, springing in response to quivering legs. I think it was the hands at the beginning, facing and handling a series of open cables, that is all, miraculous: working the body’s pulse resonant into the always mains power sound system. Slow descent into a pause (jiggle unceasing) even if the odd pointillist gesture, following the time into stillness.
A relaxation into the second head, leaning back against the chair to expose to the ceiling a beatified visage. Of concerts I have seen many, and there is often a point, as there is just now, where he loses me, it’s too much, too affected, and he wins me back over. How, at that moment, I can’t recall. Maybe, the old grace of brevity.
The third head is the head decapitated, the body writhing, violence of lines whistling the air, cubic volumes crushing this space, space and stillness welcoming and luxuriating. Headless boy has tangled himself up to offer breath into music, sonorous void breath, in and out of air-conditioned hiss, in and out of body-cabled signals telegramming in and out, exultant tangle of limbs and cables... how often are you pushed by a music that, by a person who wants to move you.
