Chinese Garden

Chinese Garden

There is a lovely Chinese Garden in Frankfurt. It was a lovely, hot and sunny day. This brought everyone out into the parks, where they were taking the opportunity to bask in the warm spring sunshine.

It must be the spiritual influence of the traditional Chinese garden, which is an oasis of cool and calm in the city centre, that makes people want to dance in the old building. These people were dancing Salsa and entertaining the visitors. A Heron even turned up to look on in a 'cool bird like' way.

Materiality? Well, it must be the embedded design of the Chinese garden with its little bridges, nooks and crannies carved out of rock that inspires people to perform a little dance. It is the calm that the water garden exudes - that takes away the stresses and strains of the week. So, material artefacts, the stones, the rocks, the ponds, the curved temple style roof, all combine to create and inspire a performance from the people that are drawn to it.

So - materiality reflects spirituality and also inspires performativity :)