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Peripheral Futures Revisiting “Half the Sky, the whole sky” – How to dance Ding Ling 丁玲 (1904-1986) and why

  • Wednesday, 10 June 2026, 18:00 - 20:00
  • Centre for Asian and Transcultural Studies, Seminargebäude, CATS Auditorium (R. 010.01.05), Voßstraße 2, 69115 Heidelberg
    • Gao Yinfu, Performance-Künstlerin, Regisseurin und Dramaturgin (Frankfurt/Main)

In this lecture dance performance, artist Yinfu Gao tells the story of her family and explores the question: Why should women never give up writing? At the centre of this narrative stands Ding Ling (丁玲), one of the most influential Chinese writers of the 20th century. Despite 22 years of political persecution, she returned to the stage of history through her literary works. Inspired by Ding Ling’s feminist legacy, Yinfu Gao reflects on her own relationship with writing and uncovers the deep-rooted connection among the writing women in her family. The title “Half of the Sky, the Whole Sky” refers to the Maoist slogan “Women hold up half of the sky,” which encouraged women’s participation in public life in China, yet often under the condition of conforming to male ideals. The so-called “Half of the Sky Generation” includes women like Ding Ling, who have shaped and inspired artists like Gao. Today, a new generation begins to question this influence: How can these stories be connected across generations and borders? And what impulses do they offer for the future?

Foto der Künstlerin

About Yinfu Gao

Yinfu Gao, born in 1995, from China, currently lives in Frankfurt am Main. She is a freelance performing artist, director, dramaturg, member of LaPROF, M. A Angewandte Theaterwissenschaft in Gießen. Her working method incorporates documentary theatre play and site-specific dance performance, which often addresses social issues in contemporary China. She had movement training in Martial Arts, pop dance and contemporary dance.

Alle Termine der Veranstaltung 'Peripheral Futures – Reading History from the “Margins”'

Where is future created? Based on some of the research done in the Thematic Research Network “Denk(t)räume–(Re)thinking and Building Futures” and at CAPAS, the Käte Hamburger Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies at Heidelberg University, this event series takes the question of building futures from the margins as its starting point for a review of some of the seminal literature in global history. The aim is to foreground marginalized sources (material peripheries, e.g., the “un-disciplined" knowledge produced by the arts), positions (socio-political pheripheries, e.g., that of indigenous protesters), and regions of the world (spatial peripheries, e.g., parts of the world that do not make headline news) as well as specific times (chronological pheripheries: questioning why there may be a privileging of specific periods in time while neglecting others). 

In taking what is read as “marginal”, its voices and sources seriously, and by including artistic and activist resources, this series offers an intervention to established academic reasoning: at a time when apocalyptic narratives and authoritarian visions of the future dominate public discourse, the events focus on different forms of “critical hope” that can emerge in times of crisis: analytically grounded, socially engaged, and convinced that a diverse, collectively shaped future arises from the productive tension between different worldviews, the event series sets out to test out transcultural perspectives on and alternative approaches to the writing of histories (of and for the future).

English