DAMP constructs a post-humanist pathological theatre where a cupping therapy session (TCM) becomes the site of performance. Two performers engage in everyday conversation through a “smart input system,” discussing the determinacy of linguistic signs and the instability of narrative relations within social space.

 

The sonic environment holds together mechanical vibrations and clinical dynamics: the ancient technique of “expelling dampness” in Chinese medicine merges with inflation under digital capitalism, bodily discipline, and the extractive machinery of illness-as-metaphor. Vitamin tablets and news bulletins circulate as metabolic supplements, exposing the molecular collusion between nutrition and geopolitics. Transactions, market models, and the jokes of taxation are inscribed upon the skin-interface, as dialogue unfolds under the simultaneous pressures of climate crisis, digital surveillance, and identity disintegration.

 

Extending Liu’s inquiry into sonic politics—how sound operates within social relations and power structures—DAMPpushes into the borderlands of medicine and performance. It responds to her interest in instrument studies, transforming medical devices into improvised instrumental systems. It deepens her exploration of sonic ecology, where bodies, devices, and acoustic environments form interdependent systems. At the same time, it connects with her memetic studies, treating performative acts, sound generation, and conceptual circulation as cultural units capable of mutation, replication, and re-contextualization.

 

Through this methodology, DAMP emerges as a form of surgical performance: where treatment and performance overlap, and the process itself becomes sound. It creates a hybrid ecosystem between clinical practice, live performance, and sound installation—where healing, listening, and resonance collapse into a single gesture.