Still Noise: Occupying a Performance Space
Still Noise is a 50-min lecture-performance that dissects how silence & noise are socially engineered, who is amplified and what it costs for a body to truly be heard.
The project began with a question I couldn't quite locate: why does it cost so much to be listened to?
I'm interested in the performance space as a machine — the double doors, the insulated walls, the PA system, the booking infrastructure — all of it working together to clean the background, so that a signal can come through. I wanted to stand inside that machine and look at it from the inside.
The lecture performance moves through sound: silence as a luxury, noise as a filter, amplification as both gift and constraint. I demonstrate and move through the technical infrastructure of a performance space. I use these not just as metaphors but as the actual materials of the work. Because somewhere in learning how to operate this machinery, I started to wonder whether I was mastering it, or being shaped by it?
Underneath the acoustics, I'm asking something more personal — what happens when the voice that gets amplified is one that the space wasn't originally built for? And what do you do when you've learned that, in order to be understood, you have to let go of language entirely?
Still Noise is about that negotiation. About the fine line between amplification and distortion. Between occupying a space and being permitted to occupy it.
Production Credits
Created and Performed by Zhuo Mengting
Set Designer & Construction: Rupert Earl
Lighting Designer: Sanli Wang
Textile Collaborator: Dominique Savitri Bonarjee
Literary Consultant: Sam Kastin
Production Support & Access Consultant: Burong Zeng
Communications Coordinator: Lubing Chen
Key Visuals Designer: Runxuan Yang
Production Photographer & Video: Holli Xue
Supported using public funding by Arts Council England
Presented with commissioning support from Cambridge Junction
Project development supported by South London Gallery, SPILL Festival, Theatre Deli and New Diorama Theatre
Still Noise is a 50-min lecture-performance that dissects how silence & noise are socially engineered, who is amplified and what it costs for a body to truly be heard.
The project began with a question I couldn't quite locate: why does it cost so much to be listened to?
I'm interested in the performance space as a machine — the double doors, the insulated walls, the PA system, the booking infrastructure — all of it working together to clean the background, so that a signal can come through. I wanted to stand inside that machine and look at it from the inside.
The lecture performance moves through sound: silence as a luxury, noise as a filter, amplification as both gift and constraint. I demonstrate and move through the technical infrastructure of a performance space. I use these not just as metaphors but as the actual materials of the work. Because somewhere in learning how to operate this machinery, I started to wonder whether I was mastering it, or being shaped by it?
Underneath the acoustics, I'm asking something more personal — what happens when the voice that gets amplified is one that the space wasn't originally built for? And what do you do when you've learned that, in order to be understood, you have to let go of language entirely?
Still Noise is about that negotiation. About the fine line between amplification and distortion. Between occupying a space and being permitted to occupy it.
Production Credits
Created and Performed by Zhuo Mengting
Set Designer & Construction: Rupert Earl
Lighting Designer: Sanli Wang
Textile Collaborator: Dominique Savitri Bonarjee
Literary Consultant: Sam Kastin
Production Support & Access Consultant: Burong Zeng
Communications Coordinator: Lubing Chen
Key Visuals Designer: Runxuan Yang
Production Photographer & Video: Holli Xue
Supported using public funding by Arts Council England
Presented with commissioning support from Cambridge Junction
Project development supported by South London Gallery, SPILL Festival, Theatre Deli and New Diorama Theatre
STILL NOISE at Cambridge Junction, 2026. Photo by Holli Xue
STILL NOISE at Cambridge Junction, 2026. Photo by Holli Xue
|
STILL NOISE at Cambridge Junction, 2026. Photo by Holli Xue
|
work-in-progress version at South London Gallery, 2026. Photo by Vivi Peng