Blog post
By Zhao Zhibo
The edge as a point of departure
“Edge” — My teacher, Chris, offered a wide range of interpretations of the term, I like that, and understood very well.
Yet, for me, it is a deeply personal and inherently contradictory starting point.
Perhaps, “the edge” speaks to my long-standing experience of moving between Chinese and Western cultures — as someone profoundly nourished by Chinese traditions, and who later earned a PhD in the UK. I often feel I belong to both systems, and simultaneously, not fully to either.
So when I encountered the theme Dancing on the Edge, I began to wonder:
Could the “edge” itself be a way of being?
In the Western context, edge often implies the cutting edge, the avant-garde, a kind of radical breakthrough. So, initially, it seemed to raise questions about artistic innovation and pushing boundaries.
But for me, the “edge” feels more like an inner fissure — a state of in-betweenness, a quiet instability. It is less a claim to innovation, and more a meditation on where I find myself:
a sensation of drifting,
a space that is uncertain,
perhaps even a condition of being.
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