Yingmei Duan: "Sleepwalker" (2002). image copyright: Yingmei Duan

Yingmei Duan (China, Germany *1969)

"As the audience comes in, I have already been lying in my starting position for some time. I am asleep on the floor in front of the stage. I wake up as if I were in a trance and slowly stand up. I then move towards the audience as if I were sleepwalking. Suddenly, I slap someone in the audience in the face. Then, as if nothing had happened, I move on." (Yingmei Duan)

Yingmei Duan was a member of the East Village artists' colony in Beijing and took part in their performance 'To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain' in 1995, which achieved international fame. Duan moved to Germany in 1998 and studied with Marina Abramović, Birgit Hein and Christoph Schlingensief at the Braunschweig University of Art. Her performances, which have been presented internationally at festivals and in exhibitions since 1993, often show her asleep or dreaming.