When encountering a bear, we should not turn our back and run. A human will never outrun it. Instead, we should stand still, raise our arms, and sing loudly to scare it away.

“What to do if you Meet a Bear: A Guide to Wildlife Safety” is a series of invasions of my Chinese friends’ private spaces in Middletown, Connecticut over the span of a week. It was first conducted at the beginning of the Shanghai lockdown that slowly developed into a nation-wide still continuing high pressure lockdown in the name of Covid policies. Facing intense deprivation of freedom and persistent harassments from the government that my family and friends experienced in China. I was in anguish and in rage. I responded to it by carrying out intrusions on the other side of the planet.

I did these gestures in my Chinese friends’ bedrooms. I created a shifting of identities between the intruder and the owner. Standing in a malleable space that itches for geological and temporal folds, I proposed a fight or negotiation of the ownership of private life and bodily autonomy.