Pan Daijing

Vivian Host

I’d like to welcome Pan Daijing, who is sitting next to me.

[applause]

Pan Daijing

Hello.

Vivian Host

Pan is an artist working between noise, techno, performance art, dance, theater, industrial and the avant-garde. You may know her from her album Lack that came out last summer on the Pan record label, or maybe from her confrontational and multidisciplinary performances at festivals like CTM and Atonal. And not long ago she was sitting where you guys are sitting right now. She was a participant in the 2016 Montréal Red Bull Music Academy. I feel like all of the things that I mentioned describe Pan, and yet none of them really do. So I’m very excited in the next hour to find out more about her riveting work.

Pan Daijing

Thanks for having me.

Vivian Host

So good to see you. So I thought we could actually start this conversation off with some music from Lack. You’ve said several times that your music is a way of saying things that you can’t necessarily say in real life.

Pan Daijing

Yeah. I guess for every artist and musician the reason why they do what they do – no matter [if they are a] painter, sculptor or poet – that’s because they chose or were chosen to be gifted this way of expression as the kind of language they can speak the best in everything they can manage. So I guess it makes sense for me to say that I can make my speech most clear and express the most through music because that’s just how I feel naturally.

Vivian Host

When did you figure out that music was the ideal form of expression for you? Or sound, rather?

Pan Daijing

Well, I would say growing up I was always very interested in sonic stimulation, sound, environment, and I feel that’s very straightforward and most mysterious. And it really just resonates with how I feel about the world. But really, to feel like, ‘OK, music can be a choice or sound can be a form of expression,’ was really when I stepped out of my teenage time, and going abroad for the first time in my life, and confronting a lot of things I was not aware before about myself; about the world. And I guess around 2014, which was not so long ago.

Vivian Host

I want to play something from Lack, and this appears in the middle of the record. It is your debut solo, full length [album]. It’s called “Act of the Empress.” Can you say anything about it before I play it?

Pan Daijing

Well, I... growing up I watched a lot of... I’m sure everybody has a very unique upbringing in a way. And I just happened to grow up watching a lot of historical TV shows in China. And I was very interested in the role of women in this empire time. I think it’s something very special, and I always have this fantasy of... You know, because it was never possible for women to be the head of the country. And it’s still not possible right now. But there was one woman that was the wife of the emperor, and after he passed away she became the king of the country. So I thought it was kind of inspired by her story.

Vivian Host

Well, let’s hear it. Here’s Pan Daijing with “Act of the Empress.”

(music: Pan Daijing – “Act of the Empress” / applause)

Vivian Host

So you’ve just been listening to Pan’s “Act of the Empress” that comes midway through the album Lack. And I just played it early on so you can get a sense of what her musical work sounds like. How does that feel to you to hear that?

Pan Daijing

I don’t know. I’m not really the kind of person that would listen to my own music that much because I think it’s quite demanding; because it’s really personal, and I really need a lot of space and [to] be in the right mood to be able to engage [in] a past I have. But this specific sound, for me, it’s really a lot of... It’s [a] really empowering feeling while listening to it. Almost a bit too much. But I guess that’s just because I made it maybe. [laughs]

Vivian Host

One of the other inspirations for this record was horror movies, right? Or depictions of women in movies?

Pan Daijing

Yeah, I’m really not a huge fan of horror films. I really love watching films. I almost watch one or two films... More than I listen to music, let’s say. I’m really interested in the psychological build ups in films, especially you know the ones that have stories related to... not necessarily females, but feminine beings in films. It can be all gender, and I find it’s very fascinating. Because in a way, I mentioned I am searching for this kind of personal connection when I express through music. And so when I see stories or watch films that I feel I personally resonate with, it triggers a lot of emotions and I like to get inspired by those emotions. So I would say a big part of the inspiration for the making of Lack came from this sort of, let’s say, psychological narrative; like the script or the stories or even sometimes a gesture of the actress or how the camera is moving. All these very detailed things could inspire a whole song. So there’s a lot of things and I guess I spent a whole year watching a lot of those films, and just thinking about stories and looking into my past, reading books that I feel like would help me understand a lot of things. In a way, it’s like almost therapeutic, I would say.

Vivian Host

What sorts of books were you reading? Like psychology books? Novels?

Pan Daijing

I’m not really a big fan of fiction. Because when I read English, it’s quite slow. I do like to read philosophy books just because my dad had a lot of them. Yeah, and also, it really depends. Poetry. All sorts of stuff. Scripts, theater plays, and just... I would even read out loud and I think it’s quite interesting. You know, when I really like a paragraph, I would read it again and again with different emotions and record it on my phone and listen to it. And I think it’s almost like someone’s talking to me and it feels differently.

Vivian Host

Yeah, that’s interesting. It’s sort of like acting as a way of channeling the emotions of these different characters.

Pan Daijing

Yeah, definitely. I really like this. I feel like for me, the theater elements or let’s say the acting elements in my work is very natural because I really feel like a lot of times, I hear things, I see visuals at the same time and quite often I see myself as one of the roles in the scenery. So it’s very natural. I feel like I’m acting out the music. And that happens in my performance as well.

Vivian Host

So what sorts of things, if you’re comfortable talking about this? I know that you see almost like an entire movie or an entire show in your head when you’re making music. You don’t make the music and then think of the visual. It’s like the visual is always part of it. What sorts of images were in your mind in general when you were working on Lack?

Pan Daijing

It’s just all situations. You know, I feel very almost over-excited about the world, but not the connection between an image. I see right now it’s a situation, but you know, it feels interesting when you were just being thrown at a situation and not knowing, before and after, the cause. Your understanding of the situation is based on who you are and I think the same happens with music. With gear... I mainly work with analogs. I’m not very good at computers. So I step in[to] a situation with a set-up and how I feel about the synth, and this very intimate, almost loving encounter with the gear. And it’s the same when I create music and how it makes me feel. It always will create a natural... It could be a smell, it could be a temperature and the triggers all together put me into a situation. And it just happens naturally. It’s like information or digits. Your brain unconsciously collects before, [during] the whole time you’re living and it just [gets triggered] by certain things.

Vivian Host

On the note of synthesizers, are there some tools that you consider to be essential to your work? How important are the tools in general?

Pan Daijing

You mean tool as the gear?

Vivian Host

As the gear, or even things that you’re sampling regularly. Or is it changing all the time?

Pan Daijing

I don’t really use samples. I think it’s just very interesting, the whole idea of sampling sounds and I would love to get more into that. But I do... You know, when I don’t use... Let’s say the acoustic sounds, or I either fill recordings or I play them. And I do think because I don’t come from an academic background... I never really learned anything I do now, so I like to treat every... You know, it’s like the first encounter is so important. I just believe this [is] fate almost, which [the] synth belongs to. It’s like a saying like... Where I come from, they always say, “You have your own mountain.” So it’s really this you don’t know which one it is. You just have to go to one after another and one day you’ll find out that’s your mountain. You belong here.

So I feel the same with gear and it’s just: I turn it on. I usually don’t read, like go on YouTube to watch a tutorial how to do this and that. I just... I heard some sounds in some songs and was like, “Oh, I really love that.” I just research on what gear that could possibly be and I try it out. If it really connects with me and then I know we should talk, we should do some stuff together. It’s like a friend. If it doesn’t happen naturally, there’s no point for me to make extra effort. So I guess there’s a few [pieces of] gear [and] synthesizers that I really love just because we really connected and from the beginning.

Vivian Host

You have a piece of gear that was maybe the first thing that you bought. The Mochika?

Pan Daijing

Yeah. It’s almost broken because I travel with it all the time. I just found it on... Actually, when I was traveling here in Berlin for the first time, I wanted to get something and I just go to this Berlin eBay and it was on sale there. I was like “Oh, this looks really interesting.” And I researched it a bit. It’s also like a special thing for me because it was one of the first things that I really [got] and I had no... You know, it’s not because I heard it. It’s like you randomly walk into a restaurant and it happens to be your favorite restaurant. That’s how I felt about it and the sound was just really powerful and a lot of my work is... I really believe in improvisation because that brings out a very intuitive approach to work, which for me is very important because then it connects with authenticity and all that I believe in.

So I feel like this little thing that really... Because it’s just really a wild horse. It’s handmade, from this guy in Peru. It’s not that many and not really calculated. So sometimes it just turns off while I’m even playing in the middle of my set, but that’s fine. It’s like falling off a horse, but it’s really fun when you have this specific one that’s, it’s difficult to train, but it’s fun.

Vivian Host

You don’t mind having intense synth friends for your friends. [laughs] I want to talk a little bit more about your background because I think it’s really interesting and I think most people’s aesthetic sort of starts developing even when they’re very, very young. So tell me a little bit about where you’re from, and what you were into when you were younger.

Pan Daijing

Well, I was born and raised in a city in the southwest part of China called Guiyang. And then I went to university in Beijing when I was 17. And I left China for the first time six years ago. That’s basically the fact check. I don’t know. I really feel really connected to where I’m from, and I really appreciate my upbringing as very disconnected with the rest of the world. And also it’s like really a mountain city.

Vivian Host

Can I stop you right there? Can we actually put up picture number five?

Pan Daijing

You have a photo?

[photo appears on screen]

Vivian Host

This is not even the most glamorous photo of Guiyang. I suggest that you do a little Google image search because it’s kind of a fantastical place in terms of the architecture.

Pan Daijing

Yeah, I really love it. And there’s a lot of monkeys. I always joke, it’s like monkeys in my hometown are like kangaroos in Australia. They’re not jumping into your house, but they sometimes bump into you, they [are] lunging and... It’s a place that we have 4,000,000 people, so it’s a lot. But you’re in nature. So I feel like it gives me this chance to embrace humans and nature at the same time. It’s interesting. But, of course, culturally it’s not like... There’s nothing really cool for contemporary stuff. But we have the most minorities in the whole country. So it’s a very mixed culture. I’m not, let’s say, heavily involved in all those minority ceremonies or anything, but you see it all the time, and different ways of singing, and it’s amazing. That’s when I started to realize that voice is something so special. Everyone’s voice is unique and the power that a voice can transmit is enormous.

Vivian Host

So at the same time as being young and even being a teenager before you left Guiyang, you weren’t really that into music, at least not in the traditional way of consuming albums or being part of any sort of scene.

Pan Daijing

No. In this way I feel a bit bad... I was just really like a nerd when I was growing up I guess, and not really [one of] those cool kids who knew where to get those CDs with the hole. Because we can’t really get... When I was growing up, it was you have to get this, we call it [speaks Mandarin]. It’s like you get the CDs, it was treated when you import it as like a wasted plastic and they all get a hole or tape that’s cut, but you can still fix it and listen to it. So you go to this kind of market on the bridge and you look at what cover looks nicer and you just get it. I was not aware of those. I was just doing [my studies] and playing sports and kind of a happy, boring kid. Just study. I don’t really necessarily think you have to really be involved and soaked from what you do since you were a kid because what’s in you is always there. You can experience [the] world in a very different way and not everyone’s path has to be similar. I really appreciated that I was not involved in music or art at all, and none of my family members [are] interested in it.

And I just feel like I see the world in a very... I collect feelings and information in a very different way that actually puts me in a different place now when I express. But I do remember my first encounter with [the] western world was when I got this tape of Michael Jackson. It [was] Invincible. And I just thought the cover was cool. It’s like minimal. Now I know it’s minimal. Back then I was like “OK, it looks different than the next two.” Celine Dion and Mariah Carey. I was like, “Oh, this looks very different.” So I got that. And my mom gave me this tape player and I put it in and the battery was almost running out and I didn’t know so I just played it. And it was like, you know when you play a tape and the battery is dying, it’s like pitched down, super slow and metal vibe. So I was like “Wow, this is really cool.” [laughs] That’s how I remember that. But of course, later I found out Michael Jackson is not a metal guy.

Vivian Host

Then you were like chopped and screwed.

Pan Daijing

I’m still super into him. He’s great, you know? But I just found it’s really funny how my first impression of western music was “Woah, that really sounds like someone was chanting on the mountains over there.” I didn’t know it was going to be... I thought it was going to be so different. But it was in a way very close to what I have experienced before. I guess it was a nice first encounter.

Vivian Host

What were the subsequent encounters? What did you encounter after that, western music-wise?

Pan Daijing

I just obsessively listened to that one tape for a long time and of course then with the battery in and stuff. I don’t know. I just, I guess maybe I just lost interest in digging... I don’t know, I went somewhere else. And after a long time, I think maybe I picked up on my music... Oh yes, karaoke bars, of course. We have these – I’m sure in Japan, South Korea it’s the same – these trippy karaoke rooms. Hello Kitty themed, Snoopy themed, you know? And when I was a teenager, that’s where we would hang out all the time. You go out, you go to a karaoke place and I just loved seeing the karaoke place. But of course you have to learn all these Chinese pop songs to be able to... Or of course you can also sing Celine Dion if you can, but you know...

Vivian Host

Speaking of trippy things, I want to show this video that represents something that you might have watched on TV when you were young. You told me last night that you watched a lot of TV growing up and all sorts of things and you weren’t really into cartoons. So you were often watching more serious adult historical movies. But then also this show. We can talk about it afterwards, but I think we should just show it to people first. This is from an episode of a show called Journey to the West and it features the Monkey King. Video number six, please.

(video: clip from Journey to the West / applause)

Vivian Host

Yes, we should all clap for the Monkey King. Well, that’ll set your brain on fire as a little kid or an adult.

Pan Daijing

Yeah. That’s like... It’s like X-Files for a lot of people in many states. Like that was the X-Files for me. You get really obsessed and so many episodes, never ending, and every day just waiting in front of the TV for it to happen, and I really thought I was a monkey. Yeah, so it was nice.

Vivian Host

Yeah, this may seem erroneous, but it will come back later because your work is not only about making music and putting out albums, but it’s really a multi-disciplinary approach that encompasses also dance movements, theater, video, performance art, etc. And I think you got some of that, costumes as well, into your brain as a child.

Pan Daijing

Definitely.

Vivian Host

You didn’t, at first, think that you were going to be a musician. You went to Beijing to study what?

Pan Daijing

Well, I studied accounting, but I don’t know anything about it. Don’t ask me why.

Vivian Host

Good, I don’t know anything about it either. At what point did you get it in your mind that you needed to go somewhere else?

Pan Daijing

From the first day I stepped into the University. China; it’s the situation. I studied really, really hard to rank high, to be able to go to the best school, blah, blah, blah. You get there, you’re like, “Come on, you’re joking. This is...” I’m not going to talk shit right now, but I didn’t think that was how I wanted to spend my next four years.

Vivian Host

Is San Francisco where you first encountered the noise scene, or noise music, or experimental music? Or had you already been interested in that in Beijing?

Pan Daijing

Yeah, Beijing had a really big noise community. I mean really big compared to other stuff. Everybody’s very tight with each other in a way, and I just... Of course, I also liked the places – I mean they’re all shut down now, but [where] we used to go there’s someone playing piano, there’s someone reading poems, there’s art films screening and some noise concert happening all at the same time in this ancient house. It’s really nice, and I didn’t really know what that was. I was too young to really understand it in a way, because I’d never experienced that before as other people have already been part of these things since they were teenagers. I kind of get a taste of it, and I thought it was something really interesting. Of course in San Francisco so many things happen. I go to clubs to see dance music, and I go to small venues; there’s avant-garde, experimental concerts, all these things. It’s really open-minded, cultural-wise; a very dynamic, multicultural place. It’s a melting pot. I didn’t feel like I was being really... how do you call this? People are very familiar with people from China there, because [they have] this big Chinese community, so I felt in a way very welcomed. I always feel safer to engage in the nightlife, let’s say. I went out to see things a lot, and of course also there’s no restriction on the internet. You can use YouTube now, you can use all these sort of things because they’re all restricted where I’m from, and I wasn’t cool enough to know what VPN was, you know? I’m abroad. I was like, “Oh, you can go to this website, I can go to these clubs,” and one after another you link to things. Just a lot of free searching, and it started.

Vivian Host

So you were kind of making up for lost time in a way, and heavily researching on the internet all of these things that were interesting to you.

Pan Daijing

Yeah, definitely a lot, a lot of research. I feel like I spent all these days listening and reading and watching and my eyes were just so big, it was a whole world opened up to me. There’s also a point [at which] I got really sad because I realized how much I’ve missed out. Everyone I met, I talked to, they have been listening to this kind of thing since they were very young. When I just started, people talked about gear, the records they know. “Do you know this? Do you know that?” I didn’t know anything and I feel really bad about it. Now I completely changed my attitude.

I think it’s good not to know, but it’s important to always learn and study. But it doesn’t matter if you don’t know. No one knows everything, and there’s no point of showing off knowledge. It’s a totally different thing than creating and what inspiring is, it’s not about how much you know. But of course as a kid I want to have my security, I want to be part of a community, I want to have friends, and I feel like, “I don’t know this and that.” The more I know, the more I know I don’t know, and that’s a very difficult time to deal with. I got over it, in a way.

Vivian Host

Before we move on I wanted to play a clip from a documentary that’s showing some early industrial acts, mostly from England, like Test Dept, Coil, Current 93, etc. I think they’re saying some interesting things about sort of the ethos behind their work. If we can play clip number seven, please.

(video: clip from The Sound Of Progress)

Vivian Host

That was a clip that we were watching from The Sound of Progress, and I realized that the members of Coil there might be hard for some people to understand, but what they were talking about was using their own personal experience in their work and how difficult that is to do right, but how gratifying it is when you can do that. And then the guy said that some people might find that very egotistical, but he actually thinks it’s egotistical for people to think that they know anything about other people’s personal experience.

I don’t know. Were some of the ideas of people like Coil, and Test Dept, or Diamanda Galás or sort of any of these people working in really out-there music from the ’80s and ’90s important for you?

Pan Daijing

Well, Coil and Diamanda Galás are definitely very important influences for me, especially when I started listening to electronic music. I guess it’s a lot of confronting your past and dealing with fear. I felt quite often very scared when I was abroad alone. You encounter a lot of situations, you’re not in a safe place anymore. Especially when you don’t have any friends, your family’s not supportive to you, I’m sure it happens to a lot of people as well. Of course, you’re evolving from a teenager. Maybe you’re in doubt, maybe you’re not. You’re like, “What am I?” and all these kinds of things. You know you can go off and go to dark places, and I think that’s absolutely fine.

For me it’s to always stay positive. I don’t have a problem, but I accept that I feel like my upbringing will always feel a bit sad. But it’s okay. When I hear Coil’s music it’s really melancholic stuff, but it feels a lot of love. The same when I saw Diamanda Galás’s performance; it’s power but not showing of power, so there’s nothing macho in this kind of exhibition of how powerful she is as a woman. More telling people there is no need to be afraid of the idea of being afraid. This sort of thing, it’s really inspiring, really motivating. Also, I think both of them are very pure artists. You can see in their crafts and what they’re believing is really, really pure. In a way, [it’s] almost not even innocent how they approach their work, and they’re exposing their souls in the work and I think that’s super important. That’s what makes the work original and authentic. I think that’s beautiful.

For me, that’s where I want to come from and how I was brought up. It’s a pure place and I want to stay there. I see those people have been doing this for so many years, and they’re still doing it. I mean, unfortunately Coil’s not there anymore, but one year, two years ago I played actually at Funkhaus with Diamanda Galás. The performance was mind-blowing, and they’re still there doing what they’ve been doing. Spreading this kind of, I consider it love, so I think it’s really beautiful. Definitely they’re a very important influences for me.

Vivian Host

There’s something about this sort of very powerful music, we’ll just call it noise or experimental, even though that’s pretty reductionist. There’s something about these extreme noise situations and these confrontational performances that create a feeling or enable you to access certain feelings that maybe you can’t access when you’re listening to dancehall with your morning coffee.

Pan Daijing

Yeah, which is also nice. Definitely. I would say I definitely embrace all kinds of music. I listen to really everything, but I think the thing is there’s something that it’s not [like] you have a choice. I didn’t feel like I had a choice. For me, let’s say the extreme in art and music, that’s how... When you’re a kid, you’re in pain, you didn’t know how to say it. You just cry, right? And when you’re a teenager you probably scream, or you scream a bit longer. I scream sometimes still, maybe I’m still a teenager, I don’t know. I learned to find ways to say it in a manner that wouldn’t hurt others, wouldn’t hurt myself, and would make my speech louder, let’s say.

It’s a very long journey, you have to read loads of books, you have to practice your craft, you have to be smart, be humble, do a lot of things. It could take years. Maybe one day you get there, but I believe there’s a way to get there, [and it] is not to change who you are. If you are provocative you can stay provocative, if you are angry with the world or you suffer. Those are all fine, it’s not to change that. The manner you have in your speech, the way you express yourself, can change, can be poetic, can be subtle, can be abstract or can be philosophical or anything. It’s like wine, you have to let it stay for years, you have to think a lot, and that also requires a lot of solitude, which brings more suffering. We’re not going deep there, but, all this package comes together and I believe we go there and doesn’t mean that... I do think in noise music, and performance art, especially now with the existence of internet, there’s so many ways of doing it. There’s no need, and I also think it’s really not necessary to repeat, what has existed. This is not a collage of aesthetics, it’s not styling of fashion. I have a lot of respect for people that have exposed their weakness in their art, and to help me to get to where I am today, so I think I want to contribute to others as well, if possible. I think it’s really important not to repeat. “Oh that sounds like that, that looks like that.” It’s really important to really spend a lot of time thinking [about] what is your true speech, in a way.

I guess, this kind of extremeness we’re talking about in this sort of practice doesn’t have to come out, necessarily, really loud, noisy. It can be silence sometimes. Silence sometimes is the most powerful thing. It’s the same thing in paintings. In ink paintings in China, there’s a lot of space. The ink sometimes only exists in very small parts, and ink poems that are untold, and in films the quick cuts. These sort of things, I feel like it’s a really long time to observe through other people’s work, and get inspired and think [about] what you have to say. It’s a process.

Vivian Host

Does making the sounds sometimes unlock the emotions? I’m talking about when you’re working in your studio or your house or wherever you work.

Pan Daijing

Yeah, definitely. I know I mentioned it a bit to you yesterday. I have to do this because there’s no other way around. I wish. I don’t know, sometimes life is a bit easier if I’m just doing a simple job and really happy that I can have a vacation once in a while, that would be nice. Unfortunately, that’s not my case. I just have to go into the studio, I have to go on with my project. Because it’s like a person. If this person is on the island alone he has no one to talk to, he goes crazy. The same with how I feel. If I don’t talk through my work, I cannot make myself be understood in the best way. I feel I’m disconnected from the world and I feel alone in a way. Only through creating work, I don’t feel alone anymore, so that’s a necessity of making music, making art.

Of course, it’s very emotional. It’s a lot of getting into a trance mode sometimes. You of course cry a lot when you write love songs, when you hear something that brings [up] your past. It sounds like I’m really emotional, but I really don’t think my life or my past is more difficult or different than others. I think everyone’s experience is very unique, every individual. The way I look at it, it’s a bit gray. And I like that because that’s just my preference. Like I like fall more than summer, it’s just a preference.

I definitely really enjoy these moments I have. You are completely naked, it feels like, and it’s good to be a child again when you’re doing your work. There’s no defense, there’s no justifying it, it’s all just... I don’t know. I feel like it’s really like [a] cutting yourself out feeling, but maybe not everybody’s enjoying that. Like I said, it’s a preference. This is the way I’m having fun.

Vivian Host

Well, let’s see some of this work. You do different sorts of things. You do different collaborative projects with everyone from opera singers to fashion designers to dancers, and we’ll see some of that as well. You also have a solo practice where you’re performing sort of various solo works, which are often not ever the same.

Pan Daijing

Yeah, I always call them stand-up comedy, because you just go there. You walk into a room, you see all the faces, you’re like, “Oh, this is everybody. What do they feel today? How do I feel about the space today? How do they feel about space today? And the story I’m going to tell is...” You always take an hour [or] half an hour and I always write notes when I’m on the plane getting there. Like words and little poems, and it triggers feelings, and it’s really fun. It’s definitely like a quick challenge because it’s mainly improvised, and nowadays I always give a little talk before, which makes it more like stand-up comedy. Making jokes, stupid jokes, and stuff like that. But it’s nice, it feels like I’m hosting a house party, kind of feeling. [laughs]

Vivian Host

Yeah. Even through you’re making and performing this often very confrontational and sometimes quite harsh sound and performance, it’s important to you, I think, to keep an element of intimacy but also a sort of sense of humor, in some way.

Pan Daijing

Definitely. I think I never want to be too serious about myself. In fact, I hope one day... I guess that’s very difficult. Of course, because your work is personal, the idea of the artist is always in the work. I just really feel like I’m almost, my self is a joke, but my work may appear to be serious. But it’s really not to have this feeling of, “We’re all so serious. I’m really serious about myself,” I really don’t feel that way. It’s very different layers. I feel like the daily self and the self in the work and the self speaking about the work are all different layers, and of course through the creations you express the ones that’re the deepest. You should not over-expose or take it out too often, then it starts to rot. It’s a very different feeling, and I just feel like that part is sometimes quite intense and difficult. I mean [unintelligible] quite intense. I think it’s nice to surround it with warm water and flowers and some bubbles, stuff like that. [laughs]

Vivian Host

You said to me last night, about the Chinese concept of harmony, so not making, not going too... I guess balancing out the dark aspects of it, or the really harsh aspects of it, with something that balances it out.

Pan Daijing

Yeah, definitely. There’s one point I realized [that] I should not overuse myself, because I would really love to still be able to create, compose, or produce in 50 years, maybe. 40 years. Then if I’m being very stupid and do random things and having too much fun, drinking nonstop or whatever. Then I wouldn’t be able to be a solid person and have a clear mind to look around, look into myself. I just feel like it’s good to have a balance, not let the darkness overwhelm yourself. It’s a matter of perspective, it’s really a matter of perspective. I think it’s what I said, for example, about Coil. All their stuff you see both sides in one song, and I think it’s important to always be able to have hopes.

Vivian Host

And I think that the physicality is also a really important part of your work. We’ll see some more of that in a bit when we watch Fist Piece. But everything from sort of dance moves, or choreographed or notated movements to just flailing around, crawling around, moving around. It seems like it’s important in your work that your body be a part of this.

Pan Daijing

Yeah. Definitely. Well, I guess sound, for me, is the most physical form of expression. And so it triggers. I can’t help [it] in a way. I can’t just play my set standing there. Either it’s voice or body, some part of me has to engage with the sound together. And I also think it’s quite important for the artist in presence, but not in presence as an identity. That’s why very often I use masks. I don’t want to feel... Now, maybe some people come to see it, they know already, before, my work a bit. But, usually, when people don’t know, they can’t tell where you’re from and all this sort of things. So, in a way, I’ve remained a very neutral... I’m like a visual placeholder for whatever gesture, pose, and giving, and whatever it can give. And also, in a way, I really don’t believe [in] documentation and archive for moments, because what you see [when you are there], when you’re watching, it’s a totally different thing.

I experience that quite often myself, especially nowadays with the development of technology and social media. If it can never be documented in the same way as in the ‘70s or ‘80s. And when you watch all this dance for camera or performance of pieces documented on films and it’s totally different now. I think that what I really truly feel strongly towards is the liveness in the moments of performance, the matter of performing sound, and you are performing art, and this moment you have with people. And it’s an aura. You cannot catch a scent on the camera. So that’s what I really appreciate. And I think that will make something different for me and the spectator at the same time. But I understand that I’m conditioning the way... Yeah.

But those are the involvements of it in like my understanding towards my own work and what I want. My approach in the work has evolved so much in the past two, three years that reflecting my ongoing projects or... I do a lot of projects at the same time. I just really felt that way. And they have become very different, I’d say.

Vivian Host

It’s so interesting to me how your work is so deeply personal for you when you’re performing it, and you have a story for yourself about what you’re working through or what the piece is about. But the work is also about people engaging with it and ascribing their own personal, like histories and emotions and stuff onto what you’re doing. Like when you were saying about using the masks so that people can see themselves sort of reflected.

Pan Daijing

Absolutely. Because, I mean, I don’t really understand. I never really had a community around me when I was growing up, but I do believe in the power of people resonating with each other. But I don’t believe, ‘OK, oh, they see me and I am this look, and, because she looks like that, I look like this too.’ I think that’s not true. It’s more important that when we’re all together in this room, I’m performing, it’s such a special moment. You’re here. I am here. I’m saying something. It’s a story and it resonates with your memory, your story, and this way we come together in an unspoken way. You know it. I know it. But we don’t need labels. We don’t need text. We don’t have to hand out before, hand out after. But that moment, we know we are together. And that’s, I think, slowly throughout years, there will be a community around this.

Vivian Host

So you’re talking about a feminine energy rather than something that is tied to one gender or one even type of being.

Pan Daijing

Yeah.

Vivian Host

I think a lot of what you’re working in has to do with energy transfer. And I think anybody that’s doing a live performance, whether it’s a DJ set, a band, something solo, is trying to harness the power of the room or trying to make some sort of connection with the audience, and have this cathartic moment with them, kind of regardless of genre of music or type of performance. What techniques have you used or worked with to get closer to your audience?

Pan Daijing

Maybe I’m this kind of desperate type, desperately hopeful type, that I would just... In order to tell people, “Hey, this doesn’t hurt,” I will be like, “Look, I just did that. It didn’t hurt.” So I would just do it to myself. Or instead of trying to convince people, “Hey, this is an apple. You can eat it. It’s not poisonous.” I would just take a bite and say, “Look, you can eat it. We can all eat it.” So that’s like if you say technique, that’s my technique. [laughs]

Vivian Host

Another thing you do sometimes is walk up to people and look them in the eye and stare at them in a way that might be uncomfortable for some people. I’m interested because that’s like... Is that coming from your own fear of looking people in the eye, or is that you wanting them to have an intimacy with you, like a forced intimacy maybe?

Pan Daijing

Yeah. I feel really sorry, sometimes, for the audience. I really force them to become really close to me. Maybe they don’t feel like that [on that] day. But, of course, they always feel free to walk away.

Yeah. I do go to the audience quite often. Or I talk. I’ll sometimes pick random people and talk about, like, just sort of have an interview with them while doing [the show]. It just happens in different ways, but it’s nice. I always think the universe is quite big, and where you are, who meets who, and it’s just so interesting. And I would... It’s like a gamble game. I’m just playing different games, and I don’t know who is ended up going to be on the other side of the table. But whoever is there, we just share these moments together. It’s nice. For me, at least.

Vivian Host

That’s really cool. I want to look at a video of another work of yours that, in a way, has a lot of sound in it, yet no sound. If we could play the video number nine. This is a piece you did called In Service of a Song.

(video: clip from performance of In Service of a Song)

Pan Daijing

Well, so it happened four days in a row at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. So I built this soundproofed box, half acrylic, half wood. And inside and outside is soil. And every day I would be in there, do one episode of a choreography with acoustic singing all at the same time, and with a sculpture I built with circuits. So people would see me moving inside, and there’s a turtle, as well. [I was] interacting with this little animal, and I would be doing my movements and lot of gestures and singing, from the beginning to the end. But because the box is soundproof, so no one can hear anything. And the piece is called In Service of the Song. And the camera, at least being documented, also, with one camera in one position every day. And inside, there’s a GoPro to document it. And it turned out after into a video, sound, and the box, and the sculpture being exhibited in the gallery as one exhibition. So that is the second part of it. Yeah. That’s the piece.

Vivian Host

Did you think much about how this piece would be received or how you wanted people to interact with it? Or was that the guessing game part?

Pan Daijing

In this one, I didn’t feel like anyone would interact. I just think I really, really adore music. And I just think we need to adore it more. So I just want to make this piece for people to think. Instead of listening to music and always have to feel like, “Give it to me,” like, “What are you giving to me now?” And why can’t we just treat it as a painting or something that you can actually just think about? What does sound mean?

Vivian Host

It seems to me like when we talk about your work from 2015 and then talk about the more recent stuff, you’re sort of moving towards things that, for you, are more subtle or more human and intimate and more subtle, as well. Like maybe that’s the direction that your practice is going.

Pan Daijing

I feel very differently towards things. I don’t think people hear you better because you are louder. So I don’t have to be always that loud. I’ve become more patient. There’s projects I’ve been working on for two years, and I’m happy to work on it for another two years, stuff like this. And it requires a lot of patience, and time, and thoughts, and you have to really be a calm person to be able to deal with all these things. Being calm doesn’t mean being quiet or ambient. As I mentioned, there’s different understandings [and] perspectives [of] extremeness in work.

The same with, like – I don’t know if you saw the Fist Piece video. The video itself, the film we made, is actually very slow. It’s almost like a visual poetry. But the way it’s presented is quite intense because with different screens around, and the different performers, and we’re all doing like operatic singing. But if you take out each element, it’s all very subtle. You are always standing in a bit of a vague gray zone. So there’s always a layer of mystery on top, which gives space to people that are watching it to create together.

So I really like this feeling of a haunting. I hope my work now can be... It’s not that easy to understand in the moment, but it will haunt you for a bit and, hopefully, will trigger something that you forgot to think about for a while, about yourself or about things you’ve experienced. But it’s nice when I get feedback like that. I really appreciate it.

Vivian Host

So before we play the video of Fist Piece, can you explain what the piece is and its relationship to your album, Lack?

Pan Daijing

Yeah. So as I said, Lack is my, let’s say, my study, my understanding, my love letter to those fictional figures in films I watched, based on a true story that I see myself or all the people I know a bit in all these things. And then, after that has come out, I decided to make my own version of this. So that’s how I feel. I think this kind of feminine energy is power. It’s like water. It’s fluid. It’s soft. But it can also be a flood. It’s the same with a fist. It’s open, it’s closed, and you can punch people. You can direct which direction you’re going. And it’s a very fluid point. It can be very powerful. It can be very loving.

Vivian Host

Actually, I think that brings up an interesting point though, is that you’re performing, not your solo work, but something like Fist Piece, you’re performing it in various places around the world. And how do you manage this when things are not really up to specifications?

Pan Daijing

Well, I mean, I guess sometimes maybe it can be difficult for people to think... You know, I think it’s really unfair. Why do we have to compromise? I mean, it says very clear, if you want the best out of this project, then this is what I need. Why do we have to compromise because we’re musicians? Maybe someone’s making a sculpture. They want bronze, they want bronze. You’re not gonna come with concrete wrapped up in golden paper. That’s not the same, right? I think the only way for me to continue and to be happy of what I do is to do it 100%. It’s fair for the people that come to see it. Fist Piece has played in IMAX cinema and we’re playing next week in the Barbican and if it’s a place... Atonal’s why the craft works. I communicate exactly what I thought and we talked a lot. I really don’t mind spending time communicating. As long as it’s clear, we get there and it happened again and again, so I would think the best way for me to do it is to keep working with people that really understand it and can meet the needs. Of course, sometimes it doesn’t happen because it is difficult to install everything we need. I know that, but when I’m there, I’m definitely not grumpy. People are here, they’re innocent, they don’t know what’s going on, they’ve never seen it. I try to give as much as I can, be a responsible person, but before and after, I would always think, ‘Me being a person responsible for my baby is not to throw it around.’

Vivian Host

Could you talk a little bit about what you’re working on right now?

Pan Daijing

Right now, I’m working on my next album. I have to say I feel like I’m in a very big point of transitioning. I feel like my next work or, even how I identify myself through my work, are changing really a lot. And I’ve also been working on this... I don’t know how do you call it. I do work with opera singers and it’s a lot of people. It’s two, three hours long for two years now, and now it’s the first year that it’s starting to getting to live. We’re finally rehearsing, act by act, and showing in different places and slowly... I call it a live play, but you can also call it an opera, whatever.

So that’s the two main things I’m working on at the moment, and I’m not really hurrying on any of them. I think whenever it’s time and it’s ready and I’m happy to share... I feel very grateful from the beginning that I have these opportunities to learn through practice, to be able to keep practicing and there are people happy to share it together or keeping up with things that I want to say. I really can’t appreciate it more. That’s what’s the most important. You’re not talking to yourself, it’s a communication. That’s really nice. A conversation, and I feel like I’m constantly generating conversations with people and always exciting things come out of these conversations. I’m talking about conversations through work, and it feels like there’s no end. It’s really nice, you see it goes on forever almost, it’s really nice.

Vivian Host

Beautifully said. Well, I think that’s a perfect place to end our conversation.

Pan Daijing

Thank you.

Vivian Host

Pan, thank you so much.

[applause]

Alright, now it’s time for you guys to ask the questions. Who’s got one?

Audience Member

My question is, if you’re doing solo performance, solo work, like the one which you said before, how much and how do you prepare for that? Is there only the concept before you go and perform it or are there certain key actions you do every time you do it?

Pan Daijing

It starts with a suitcase of gear. You have to pack your cables, pack your power cords, don’t forget your converters, stuff like that. Definitely, I would say really, almost like a drawing, a sketch, and that’s how I feel. I have a plan of act one, act two, act three. Of course, in the end, you always get really messed up, because the situation’s always different than expected. Then just ready to play the games; this triggering each other, “Oh, they behave like that and I behave like this.” That’s how I feel. It can get difficult sometimes because everything is unpredictable, but that’s also the fun of it. Only the gear I bring is predictable. That’s what’s beautiful about them.

Audience Member

Hello. First of all, I’m a really big fan of your music and now I became a really big fan of you as a person. My question will be about your creative process. You’re making really dark music, which gives me hope and light, actually. What kind of psychological challenges are you encountering during the creative process of a project? Is it too much?

Pan Daijing

Deep question. Psychological challenge. Definitely insecurity. I’m sure for everyone it’s the same. You’re blasting your speaker in your studio, you made this song, you’re like, ”Oh my God, this sounds so sick. It’s the best song I’ve ever made.” You went back to sleep, next day you come, you’re like, “Delete.” That happens. With my next album, I have a lot of my voice with lyrics. It’s difficult to hear yourself singing, saying stuff you can understand. You have to be comfortable with yourself and that also reflects an even deeper kind of insecurity that you have to deal with, for me at least. And anxiety of, “Will I even like it? Will this even be something important for me, or am I even contributing anything to make this, or am I just whining?”

All these sort of things, but I do also think all these psychological challenges are very beautiful, because it means you are real. Your work is real, and that’s the most important thing. It’s a real piece of things you’re creating, and you’re becoming more and more mature throughout this process, because you are aware of these feelings. We were talking about this being able to come from the weaker side.

I guess worse things even sometimes can happen when you’re overworked. I think when you really love what you do you can get very obsessed with it, and your physical energy and your psychological energy are not on the same level. And you don’t realize that, and your health starts to become weird. You have pains everywhere and these sort of things can influence your psychology as well. That’s why I was talking about how it’s important to keep a balance in life and all these sort of things. But it’s definitely a very difficult process and I think it can happen in every stage of creation and every stage of when you’re building up. It can happen at the beginning or even a bit later in your life. It’s also important to... Things also comes and goes for me, time to time. It happened before, it can happen again. But I think it’s for me to have faith that once you know you can deal with it and it’s fine when it happens again, you know you can deal with it again. That’s the most important.

Vivian Host

Anyone else?

Audience Member

Thank you for being here. I wanted to ask you, was it any one thing in particular at the Montréal Red Bull Music Academy that stayed with you and helped you in your career from there on?

Pan Daijing

I have to say two things. Montréal introduced PPG [Wave] to me, it’s the first time I touched a PPG. I really love this synthesizer. And playing with Pauline Oliveros; I had a conversation with her before and after. She passed away a year ago, which was very unfortunate, but of course there’s a lot of beautiful moments. I really appreciate being able to participate, because I was actually going to be part of the one in Paris, RBMA Paris, but my term was canceled because of the unfortunate attack. So I went to the one in Montréal. And on the other hand, they also helped me getting a lot of recordings down for Lack because, before that, I did a lot of acoustic recordings already and there’s a lot of synths I wanted to use that I couldn’t. And, with the beautiful studio setup, you can really get a lot of things done.

But on the other hand, I also feel, because I went there with a project already in my head, I wasn’t able to interact with the participants as much as I wanted. I knew it would also be very great to collaborate with people, jamming together and even the few moments I had jamming was really fun. So I definitely felt like it gave me a lot. Also, the two weeks reminded me a lot of my high school. You barely slept. At my high school, I slept a few hours every day. The rest of the time you obsessively study. That’s how I felt. I would obsess in the studio and collapse when I have to, and then go back again. I don’t know if I can do that again, but it was beautiful.

Vivian Host

So it was right around the time that you moved to Berlin?

Pan Daijing

Yeah, yeah. I came to Europe. It was related to the Paris RBMA, so I stayed after because then it was canceled. It was just a lot of drama that year, somehow.

Vivian Host

It’s so interesting how that was only two years ago and so much has happened since then.

Pan Daijing

I know. I think it’s very exciting. I think, for everyone, a lot is happening every year. It’s really how you see it. It can be fast, it can be slow. It’s how you see it, how you want it to be, in a way. I guess.

Vivian Host

How you manipulate time for your own ends. Does anybody have any more questions? Alright, well.

Audience Member

Hi, thank you so much for talking about such personal stuff. I know you talked a little bit about working through some insecurities. You talked a little bit about kind of internally working through your creative process, but I’m wondering a little bit about your relationship to more external ideas of success and progress in your career. How do you define success? It’s kind of like that thing, “If a tree falls and no one’s around, does anyone hear it?” If you were to keep going making this really personal, vulnerable art and, for some reason, you weren’t getting a response, how would that make you feel? Do you think about that kind of stuff at all?

Pan Daijing

Yeah, thanks for your question. I guess my idea towards this career success is... I don’t know, I never really thought about the idea of career. For me, it’s really all my projects, all my ideas, are like my babies and I feel like the mother. If you’re a mom, you can’t just go out partying all the time, because you know your baby’s gonna wake up at seven in the morning, you’re gonna feed your baby, right? It’s like you need some stability, so I... For me, it’s the same. The career is there to make me stable so I can feed my kids. That’s how I feel, I’m the mother to the projects.

I don’t know where I’m going to go, maybe people will think... I actually still don’t know how people think. It’s really nice if someone tells me positive feedback. I really appreciate that, but it’s the same. Your kid is still your kid, you love your kid anyways, even if no one says your kid is cute, but of course you’re happy when he’s like, “Oh, this is such a cute kid.” So it’s exactly the same, that’s how I feel. I don’t have a kid, but, just saying.

Vivian Host

You don’t need a kid, you have lots of work. One thing that we didn’t talk about, but I think is kind of interesting. We talked about it last night, but we didn’t talk about it up here, is how you’re making this work that’s really personal, and you want people to also interpret it in their own way, but sometimes... You’re an artist and the media is writing about you, and they often are keen to distill your identity as an artist down to these very easy talking points. Like, you’re Chinese, you’re a woman, you’re making noise music, you’re working in this, and these things get repeated over and over and over and recycled. And I think that’s something that all the artists, everyone has to deal with when they get a level of fame that they’re being written about. How have you managed this? Because I know it can be sometimes quite annoying to have, I don’t know, to not be seen as a person, or a being, or be seen through the work, but be seen as this series of identity markers.

Pan Daijing

I guess one way is... At the beginning, I was quite upset about it, but now I really understand. I can understand why this is happening, why I need to be labeled, why I need to be put almost on some sort of a market. So there’s a reason. At some point I did not look around, just focus on what I have to say and hoping one day it will be louder than the labels. Now I have more of a feeling, I can say that I don’t think people want to commission me to make a piece or to play in a venue, [that] it’s because of that. In the past two, three years, I have developed a feeling or a trust with people through my work on it, but I definitely think it’s difficult. For some people maybe it’s helpful, but it’s not my case.

I don’t want people to see my biological gender and my race, my upbringing, all this. To already have bias or assumption or they see a marketing standpoint in this. I find it quite disrespectful. If I need to make a statement, if there’s anything political, then please listen to what I have to say, not what other people have to say about me. That you don’t even need to listen to my music anymore, because you already kind of knew what she’s about – but that’s not what I said. But I think it’s a process and we are going there, and it’s definitely important to look for and fight for equality in everything. But it’s not a fight to say, “This is better than that. That’s more important than this.” I think looking for equality is what I am after.

On the other hand... For me self-identification is a journey. How do you know if I think I’m a woman? I’m not open to talking about all these things. There’s a reason why, so I feel like maybe it’s good sometimes to give people some privacy in certain things, and not... Because, oh the aesthetic looks like... I guess I was also quite often labeled with BDSM because of the aesthetic. And we talked about this: For different cultures, masks mean different things. There’s also different uses of it, and [what] BDSM means to you, means different to me. It’s not about the terms we use, the league we can fit it in. And I think also, to really support artists or people that need support, is to really respect them for who they are and their work, not to group people through how they look and assume they agree on everything and speak the same words.

Vivian Host

Agreed. Does anybody have any more questions? Alright, then I guess we’re done.

Pan Daijing

Thank you very much.

Vivian Host

Pan, thank you so much.

[applause]