On the opening night, MACA presents "Puppet Esperanto," an opening party featuring Chen Yifei, an artist of the exhibition "Planetary Navigation: As Above, So Below," the mystic pop trio Pleasure Posture, and DJ Chai Hoor. Fusing folk glove puppetry, underground scenes, and world music, the three groups of performers will lead us away from the stage onto a journey adrift on sound.

On the opening night, Chen Yifei, an artist of the exhibition "Planetary Navigation: As Above, So Below," will move his work Ambu Crossing Ports from the MACA gallery to Groundless Factory, turning the venue into a puppet stage for a glove puppetry show centered on "Ambu" and Vasili Eroshenko.

Ambu is a glove puppet: a bomb for a head, hands weaving tai chi, draped in a Palestinian keffiyeh. It grew its body in Vienna, and sprouted its legs upon arriving in Minnan, southern Fujian.

Vasili Eroshenko was a blind writer and Esperantist. A century ago, he wandered across many countries in Asia, asking through his fairy tales: "When will the ship that bears the happiness of all humankind come?"

Across the sea of time and space, they shine upon each other like fireflies...

Pleasure Posture's performance is a collage of warped memories of underground scenes: stupid punk gigs, nihilistic late-night shows, blurred club dance floors, unsettling ritual recordings, distorted nostalgic hits. Ghosts of the past drift through atmospheres woven from noise guitar, overloaded accordion, and synthesizers.

DJ Chai Hoor's set unfolds in two parts: the first begins with field recordings, samples, and instrumental sounds, as melodies and rhythms gradually surface, opening space for the live performances to come; the second follows threads of world music, downtempo, and trip-hop, moving through samples, collages, and voices toward more bodily rhythms. Sound begins with fragments and textures, slowly revealing language and meaning—much as poetry takes shape from feelings not yet named.

About the Performer: Chen Yifei

Chen Yifei, born in Minnan, southern Fujian, is a Potehi (glove puppetry) storyteller wandering across Eurasia and an editor of Prickly Paper. Concerned with how art can take effect amid social change, he practices DIY and self-organization through zines, and works with puppets alongside friends in different places, salvaging memories and weaving stories together.

 

About the Performer: Pleasure Posture

Pleasure Posture is a music-performance practice initiated by Xu Ruize, Yang Xiao, and Zhang Zheming. Their sound shifts restlessly between mixing-desk feedback, disdainfully strummed rock riffs, and seductive club beats. The three formed an extraordinary bond at a spiritual growth seminar, and their collaboration ensued...

Yang Xiao: guitar / vocals

Xu Ruize: synthesizer / vocals

Zhang Zheming: accordion / vocals

 

About the Performer: DJ Chai Hoor

DJ Chai Hoor is a translator by profession and a music collector. She gathers records on her travels and sources material from old records, transcribed tapes, and scattered fragments of sound. Her early experiences of guitar learning and improvisational bands gradually shape the way she listens and creates today.

She is drawn to the state of language before it becomes meaningful: when a language has yet to be acquired, what we first hear is not what it "says," but its timbre, breath, rhythm, and the body's most immediate response. For her, language before acquisition is closer to poetry; only later does it settle into meaning and habit.