A performance by ioi Choi & Lương Huệ Trinh, for Festival Printemps des Humanités 2025

Zugunruhe [ZOO-goon-roo-uh]: Migration Restlessness 

 

Migratory birds that are raised in cages experience restlessness and agitation around fall and spring — times where their species normally travel in search for longer days, maximizing their chances for food and procreation. German behavioral scientists gave this manner the name zugunruhe.

 

Since leaving their birthplaces of Hanoi and Macau, respectively, avant-garde musical artist Lương Huệ Trinh and abstract-expressionist painter ioi Choi searched for an elevated artistic expression — their compass being the innate desire to forge new paths, layer new perspectives, and adopting a different arrangement of their creative signature. 

 

“Zugunruhe” is a meeting point of both artists’ cultivated contemporary lens, intertwined with their respective ancestry. They dialogue with the mobile version of the exhibition “East and South-east Asian Immigrations since 1860” through a multidisciplinary performance, creating a sonic and visual landscape from scratch. The structured spontaneity serves an authentic looking glass into their cultural identity as a multilayered tapestry.