Author: TC

ODDs

Dance On Series: ‘ODDs’
Individuals cross each other’s path, a connection takes place.
The question is, however, whether or not we realize its existence.

Lam Chun-ho, Ivanhoe, a multi-discipline choreographer, will partner with Tsoi Wan-wa, Shirley, a multi-talent performer, and other team members – Swiss composer Benjamin Ryser, sound installation artist Fabian Gutscher, veteran stage designer Lee Chi-wai, and video designer Shing Pok-man – to forge an orbit within the soul that allows for introspection.

Grass Stage’s Route to Social Theatre

Lecture by Zhao Chuan
Writer, art critic, curator and theatre director

“The stage is a small world, and the world is a big stage”- how does reality unveil drama every day and make it impossible for us to stay out of social theatre? Grass Stage is a theatre collective founded in spring 2005. Under the direction of Zhao Chuan—writer, curator and theater director, it has put on a number of programs and performances which steadily grew in influence and acclaim. The members of Grass Stage encourage ordinary persons to enter the theater to create a social theater with a rich social conscience.

work in progress

Slowly walking. With a lack of body-tension. The people in the MTR are “schlärpälä”, but not with coziness. More with a hecticness, as if 5 seconds of waiting at the entrance would really make a difference. But maybe this is the best way of walking in this city. Not too stressed, and still not being relaxed.

Anonymity and Creativity

Lecture by Christopher Kriese

What would you do if you knew nobody was watching? What
would you do if you were invisible in the real world? What
would you do if you were invisible in the internet? How could
anonymity transform arts and activism?

Tracing Hong Kong Urban Space in the 1950s through the Cinema

Lecturer by Kenneth Ip Shu Kei
Chair School of Film and Television HKAPA

There were two kinds of cinema in Hong Kong in the 1950s, the Cantonese cinema which catered more to the grass-root population, and the Mandarin cinema which found its audience mostly among the middle class. Both cinemas serve as a mirror to the many social problems facing the colony after WWII. The lecture attempts to look at the division of urban space, particularly the housing problem, in that decade via a few outstanding and representative cinematic works.

[ab]sense

  The delicate dribble of water on the cheek, The remnant smell of espresso, *PAK* – snapping chopsticks, and the lingering taste of orange citrus. These are the sensations of the ordinary. If life gives us a tabula rasa, sensations are our tools. Sensations are perceivable by all of us, though often neglected. With a certain consciousness, we can bring these sensations to our awareness. To be reminded of the humbling existence of our kind. To feel sensations. To react to these feelings. To feel the feelings. Inspired by the somatosensory experience, we play with the most mundane objects of every life. We activate our senses. We discover new ways to sense and be sensed. We explore the absence and presence of sensations. They come in waves, changing as frequently as our perceptions of them. One by one, we help each other through a somatosensory journey that he or she will remember for a lifetime. Our video serves as an expression of these very experiences. The production enabled us to think about our sensations from a different perspective. By examining methodically …

Self questions (Ida):

If I leave the door and exit the `European compound` I become a stranger, because I do not understand the language and a lot of things that I see, I experience them differently than things that I know and I am used to. But I enjoy this situation a lot, because my senses are much more open. I feel like a child, seeing, smelling things for the first time.Through this situation of being a stranger I am confronted with my own perception, my values and my limitations. I see myself mirrored in other people that I pass on the street.

Non-essentialist hybridization – Now you see me, now you don’t.

Lecture by Frank Vigneron
Director of MA program in Fine Art, Chinese University of Hong Kong

After a recapitulation of the notions of ‘‘East’’ and ‘‘West’’ in the work of Edward Said and the kind of problems they have generated in the evaluation of art in Hong Kong (illustrated with some examples of two kinds of artwork using concepts and visuals from Euro-America and China), the process of hybridization is then presented as the way in which a culture will transform into something new. The question is therefore to establish what can be called a hybrid.

Group Manual to ‘The ABC of Actions on Human Connection’

First we probably talked more about our group than about what we want to do. Because we are the big group, we  always had to work on how we organize our group. We found a possible working format in ‘The ABC of Actions on Human Connection’. The Idea is to realize 26 little actions which focus on what we all have as common ground: The believe in human connection. To work on the 26 actions for the next 6 weeks, we developed following group manual:   GROUP MANUAL  ..(to be tested & refined in Eggtion).. Theme We all believe in human connection; this is what we want to focus on; it is our main theme. Presentation Thursday Goal of the group: to make a presentation about the work in progress before, during (in case it is not disturbing or it’s achieving something artistically), or after the lecture. The presentation is a composition of all works made by during the week. The composition of the presentation is decided in the afternoon by all members.The presentation can be any kind …

Imaginary Identity: The Fake Formosan George Psalmanaazaar

Lecture by Lin Hongjohn
Curator and Chairperson of Fine Arts Dep, Taipei National University of the Arts, Taiwan

In 1703 the high society of London there appeared George Psalmanaazaar who claimed himself a Formosan to be abducted by a Christian missionary. In his book, An Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa (1704) , described Formosa to be a country of abundant resources, governed by a Japanese ruler. In this fictive book, Formosan people was almost half-naked, only wearing silver plates over their private parts. Horses, camels, and elephants were domesticated for transportation. One of the high peaks of the book was that every year Formosans sacrificed the eldest sons to their gods, and even in the second edition (1705), Formosan were exaggerated as cannibals, who ate those were sacrificed and executed. Being a celebrity of his exotic oriental identity and feted by all the literary and philosophical lions of London, Psalmanaazaar were even invited to teach Formosan in Oxford University. Psalmanaazaar was the beau monde in the celebrities of London.

Transcultural Collaboration 2015

New Graduate-Level Educational Format in the Arts based in Hong Kong: Transcultural Collaboration 2015 A project of Zurich University of the Arts, Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, City University of Hong Kong/School of Creative Media, China Academy of Art/School of Intermedia Art/Hangzhou and Taipei National University of the Arts In 2015 we are launching a pioneering transcultural and cross-disciplinary educational format called “Transcultural Collaboration” for graduate students of all art and design disciplines. Selected students from the involved partner institutions will have the possibility to study for one semester within this specific program, which will be based mainly in Hong Kong. General Content „Transcultural Collaboration“ The basis of the project is the need for a discussion and understanding of “globalization” and its emerging questions and issues. It is obvious that globalization is not only about expanding production, consumption and communication, but also implies the problems and potentials of differentiation and distinction, of provoking otherness, of different forms of cultural evolution and blending, or of influencing power structures. The programme has two central characteristics that …

Lecture Björn Beneditz – Deichkind

Deichkind is one of the most successful German hip-hop collectives. They have created a very unique hip-hop language and stage appearance and celebrate very consequently a particular approach, where they use elements of improvisation, overstatement and appropriation. Björn Beneditz one of the scenographic directors showed us their artistic process from 2000 till today and gave us an impression on the bands artistic strategies.

Lecture Eisa Jocson

Eisa Jocson is interested in the particular body language of male and female pool- and striptease dancers. The artist-dancer searches with her very precise choreographies the fine lines in between male or female connotations and stereotypes. In her lecture she gave us an insight in her artistic work.

Getting old in Hong Kong

To explore a culture one can start with the question about local people growing older and the way they are treated by their surrounding. Our group, consisting of Mayumi ARAI, SUN Shih-Ting and Tobias Fandel, was seeking for some impressions about this matter by interviewing various elderly people in the streets, inside a retirement home, on a cemetery, in a park and even in a taxi.

Gestures of Waiting

Note what you see and hear, using your own disciplinary method and the ones of your group members. In the end, everyone will have a couple of observations, noted in both professional and amateur ways.
All group members analysed the material together and determined one aspect of the material as a focus/topic for the next steps. This topic is “gestures of waiting”.

“Banahaha”-Humor

Our research on humor started in an excessive demand by the city itself. As we tried to find something humorous in a metropole that seems to be driven by anything else than that we were confronted with the idea of creating our own funny moments.
So we used escalators. The wrong way. We bought a lot of Bananas and an Eggplant. Carried them through the streets, took photos with ‚em. Watching how people react, exploring what the banana does to us, how the eggplant makes us feel.

The Great Pretender

Exploring the stylish side of Zürich we visited places like the „Letten“, „Idaplatz“ and „Bullingerplatz“ to interview people about their reasons for being there, their opinions on different looks and corresponding prejudices on people around them. To our surprise it turned out that many of the interviewed people criticized their environment and didn’t openly identify themselves directly with their style nor the place. It seemed like they were just pretending to be as they were by chance.

The Hidden and Essential Women of HK

With more than 300,00 foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong, Their Roles in Households have far-reaching social, economical and cultural impact. We set out into the streets of Hong Kong to speak with them and Their Employment agencies. Behind a veil of a seemingly undervalued lab class, we discovered a convoluted situation did grapples with many elusive social issues.

Time. On Benches.

Starting from the topics streetlife, empty spaces and public space, we find out that: „The biggest crime in Zurich is sitting on a bench doing nothing“. We wondered what people do on benches and how long they’re staying there. So we filmed benches in different places.
Questions that came along were: Are you waiting or spending your time? Who has a lot of time? Are you the audience or an actor when sitting on a bench?

Galoppe…Kreuz…legs up!

In the frame of our research we made a series of experiments in deconstructing the formal elements of Swiss dance we had learned. This procedure revealed to us, how much Swiss dance – often used for the representation of swiss national identity – has always been inspired by foreign cultures, as it is actually hugely constructed by steps borrowed from German, Austrian, Eastern European dances.

Transcultural Encounters, Transnational Feminisms: Women Media Activists and the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong

Lecturer by Gina Marchetti
Professor at the Department of Comparative Literature, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Hong Kong’s 2014 Umbrella Movement, calling for a more open procedure for vetting candidates for its first exercise in universal suffrage in the election of its Chief Executive in 2017, does not have an explicit “feminist” agenda. However, initial research shows that over fifty percent of participants in the movement are female. Although underrepresented in visible leadership roles and in media reports on the demonstrations, women have played an essential part in all aspects of the movement. Moreover, they suffered from sexual harassment by counter-demonstrators intent on intimidating them and infringing on their right to public assembly. …

The Objectification of a Summer in Zurich

It was quite a surprise for chinese students that swimming being such an important part in everyday life of people in Zurich. We focused on objects that relate to swimming culture in Zurich.
The research material consists of a lot of photographies of objects lying around at Zurichs swimming spots and sounds recorded from some of the spots. The group decided to use the form of short looping film to exhibit the outcome of the researching topic.

It’s hard to dig a hole

„It’s hard to dig a hole. We wanted to dig a hole. As a common experience with people we don’t know. So we did. We had a hard job. The ground was much harder than expected, fast as stone. The first impressions : excitement, we are at night, on this huge place that belongs to us for a while, shouting, energy, desire, impatience.

The lights of the city surrounded us.
The place is a special art place.
It’s hard to dig a hole.

Cosmopolitan Rhapsody – Transcultural Tendencies in the Music Video Genre

Lecture by Prof. Jörg Scheller
Curator and Head of BA Photography, Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland

In 1995, Lev Manovich wrote: „The genre of music video has been a laboratory“. While Manovich dealt with music videos as a „constantly expanding textbook for digital cinema“, this talk will focus on transcultural aesthetics, symbols, and narratives in the audiovisual laboratories of pop culture – from sophisticated to decidedly non-sophisticated ones, from underground to mainstream, from American heavy metal to Ghanaian gospel porn rap. In place of an overview, the genre itself, this hybrid of various media – film, music, text –, will be portrayed as a genius loci for transculturality.