How will we draw a map for the Wayang Spaceship? Where did it come from? How did it land? Where is it going from here?

And as the Wayang Spaceship lifts off—once again, like the numerous times the travelling theatre has been assembled, disassembled, and reassembled—two (self-proclaimed) design-cartographers Liu Diancong and Wong Zihao haphazardly recollect the multiple spaces and times that the Wayang Spaceship has sailed through and docked at.

(Not) By chance, the latter hails from the island-city of Singapore, while the former calls the port-city of Guangzhou home. Between them and between yueju/jyutkek and wayang, they begin the onerous task of tracing the Spaceship’s trajectory as it moved and shape-shifted across distant worlds. Too numerous, and much too fleeting and fragile, their map can only hint at the Wayang Spaceship’s multiple landing points—these are after all quickly vanishing cosmologies.

Unlike traditional maps that are drawn to pinpoint places with measured precision and accuracy, their map speaks of unfixing things in space, expanding into an imagination of fluid and mobile cosmologies—appearing and disappearing, shaping and shifting, colliding and coming apart.

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The map is a surface to be folded: folded in half once, then halved twice, and then one more time. The drawn space folds into itself and the two-dimensional representation of the world is flattened once more to be slipped into the pocket of a bag pack, tucked inside the glove compartment of a car, or held within the pages of a travel journal.

Here is a map that can be folded in multiple ways—its purpose is not to efficiently compact space for keeping, but more so that multiple spaces and times can be shaped and reshaped each time a new fold is made. Each time the map is folded in new ways, distant cosmologies come into proximate relations, and whole new worlds are temporarily formed yet again. Folded, unfolded, and refolded, the map reveals (or uncovers) other landing sites, departure points, lines of flight, and constellations of meanings. Thus, across the printed surface, the indeterminate routes create shape-shifting cosmologies, seeming distant yet curiously adjoining, whereupon the Wayang Spaceship continually traverses and morphs. 

Between the port-cities of Singapore and Guangzhou, and between yueju/jyutkek and wayang, lies a sea-like space with numerously vast but vanishing cosmologies waiting to be crossed. The Wayang Spaceship sets off and—once again, the mapmakers wonder where will it be sighted next and when, if ever, will it return…