toilet adventures

It's bad manners to discuss toilet activities. But the topic often comes up when people recount their first experiences in China. For many, confronting a squat toilet for the first time is a shock.

This fundamental encounter with the unknown can tell us about the relation of purity and danger, public and private space, and the role of the state in China’s rapidly changing society. Such abstract calculations come to life on the toilet according to five stages, starting with “shock.”

"toilet adventures" is designed to provoke discussion of such experiential, theoretical and ethical issues.

It has been screened at the LSE Literary Festival in London, the Ethnografilm Festival in Paris and has been shortlisted for a major award by the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council.

(ta14)