Poster design for the China edition of Future Host: A Speech Opera.

Future Host [wèilái zhǔrén] (noun.) is an epithet commonly bestowed to children in officially Socialist states, which posit the youth as the agent, product, and site whereby the future actualizes itself. “Always already be ready”, so they’re told—a command of absolute urgency and ecstatic optimism. The coming shall overcome. In this repetitive cycle of speculation and deferral, time passes, life is left unlived, the here and now unlivable.

Premiering in New York in Jan 20–22, 2017 at Knockdown Center. Future Host: A Speech Opera is a collaboration of artists across disciplines from China and the U.S. Absent of actors, Future Host is featuring spatialized speech recordings and live performance of original music. The immersive acoustic spectacle transiently inhabits in the open, emptied chamber, which the audience experience by moving freely in space. Conceived, Written and Directed by Tingying Ma, dramaturged and produced by Kang Kang. With a team composed of C. Spencer Yeh, Kamron Saniee, Daniel Neumann and Maya Yu Zhang. *

* Excerpted from Future Host: A Speech Opera.