Clean up Individual Feedback Talks Questionnaire Goodbye Trip To Engelberg Goodbye Dinner in Engelberg After packing and cleaning up the last remains of the final presentations at Toni Areal, we packed all our warmest clothes to go up to the mountains. Engelberg was our destination to calm down from all the excitement – and yes – stress of the past weeks. But also and mainly, to get together as a group one last time again for some quality time before we all part ways. We ate, drank, danced, cooked, threw snow balls, chit-chatted, played, discussed, hugged, made promises to not lose touch and went up the mountain in a gondola to go sledding. Thank you for your effort, your energy, ideas, courage, your strengths and weaknesses, for sharing emotions, insights, believes and concerns. Thank you for many moments of laughter, tension, anticipation, of desperation, tears, of quarrel, helplessness, achievement, success, of fear, rage and joy and happiness. And after all, thank you for new friends and companions.CAN.

Set up incl. technician Rehearsals Mentoring sessions and coaching Final rehearsals Group Dinner Inaugural Conference and Official Launch of Shared Campus Final presentations Friday and Saturday Final party Clean up After three intensive months in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Zurich, this is the highlight and peak of the semester programme: at the end of the week the final presentations were due.Especially in the last few weeks, after arriving in Zurich, the anticipation and tension has increased once again. The pressure was tangible, the nerves were strained. Many have been tied to their beds with the flu for a couple of days. Nevertheless, all the groups and mentors worked at full speed, stayed for night shifts to be ready for the final presentations on Friday and Saturday night. And when Friday came, everyone was ready and excited. The spots were installed, sound checked, costumes fit, make up done. The halls filled with curious visitors fairly quickly. Also, many conference guests stayed, to immerse themselves either in conversations or some of the performances/installations. Thank you to all …

Location and exhibition space sighting Zurich University of the Arts Team work prototyping Mentoring sessions and coaching Presentations incl. technician First mark through Group Lunch The last two weeks were fully dedicated to the upcoming final performances and installations on Friday and Saturday, December 6th & 7th. The participants worked individually in their groups, checking in with the mentors, Dimitri, Ricardo, Maximilian, Elizabeth, Nuria and Daniel to discuss their plans from time to time. After the exhibition in Shanghai, almost all the groups mixed into new constellations again. Kian and Yuyus work evolves around social atmospheres. Seain and Nick joined Lena, Leal, Milos and Rae. Their working title is FLUX. Gloria and Joe were joined by Timo. They are staging an item shop. Raúl and Lambert formed a new team and are dedicated to the topic of language. Rose and Cindy have joined the group BouDai12. Now nine members in total, they continue to work around the subject of the political situation in HK: Aline, Harisson, Tobi, Colin, Duy, Cass, Riar, Rose and Cindy. Brooke, …

Zhao Chuan is a writer, curator and theatre director of Grass Stage, an independent Chinese theatre collective. The alternative, socially engaged performances of his theatre productions take place in public spaces: They turn restaurants, construction sites or lecture halls into stages. At the end of each performance, the audience is invited to talk about the work. Zhao Chuan explores, challenges, critically questions and criticizes different social aspects. Liv, Tobi, Aline, Duy and Colin met him for an open talk on the terrace of the old villa where the programme’s Shanghai exhibition took place. Liv: Tobi, Aline, Duy and Colin, you have been invested in the ongoing protests in Hong Kong and your work in Shanghai also evolves around it. Given the political situation, the museum officials have stressed that we are not allowed to touch sensitive topics. In the first mark through you had to come up with a cover story. How do you deal with the tie of not being able to address the subject of your work?  Aline: My feelings towards the censorship …

Reflection Shanghai Lecture The Phantom of Zurich and From a social Movement to a perfect Hedonistic Lifestyle by Daniel Späti Input on Collaboration by Dimitri de Perrot Workshop Introduction Group building and idea development Input on Bonds & Ties by Ricardo Eizirik After traveling from Shanghai to Zurich over the weekend individually, we all met again at TONI Areal. Still jetlagged and drained from the intense weeks at McaM Shanghai, many participants fell ill. Temperatures were low and so was the energy level. Nevertheless, the program picked up on Tuesday with the introduction of Dimitri, Max and Ricardo: New mentors, who will be accompanying us through the last phase in Zurich.  There was a space for the groups to reflect upon the opening event in Shanghai and to give feedback. The main tenor of the They also discussed whether they wanted to stay in the current groups or split and rearrange. Some groups were very sure about splitting up, like the What’s Next group and some groups were certain they wanted to stay together. Eventually, …

Group Work Set up and rehearsals Opening Event at McaM Shanghai Goodbye Dinner Shanghai Flights to Zurich The abandoned villa on the premises of the museum turned more and more into a bustling work space. As the days grew nearer to the opening event on Saturday, one could feel the tension rising. The groups were busy ordering material on Taobao, getting to work a functioning internet connection, installing sound and tv screens, building big wood structures and experimenting with different material. While some groups had a clear vision how their work will look like and were rehearsing the detailed schedule of their performance, others dealt with a minor crisis and dismissed many ideas they had come up so far: Only to begin at square one to start working even more focused. When Saturday came, all the groups were ready and eager to present their work at the opening event. It was an exciting and successful afternoon with many curious visitors who joined. Congratulations to all the participants and thank you to everyone involved at McaM …

First sighting of exhibition space at Ming Contemporary Art Museum Screening of Documentary Shanghai Youth Talk with Christopher Connery on cultures & the definition of groups Introduction on censorship Talk with Zhao Chuan on Shanghai radical art scene from 1970 t0 1990 Meet up with local artists, FU KA Independent Art Space Visit Rockbund Museum: Hugo Boss Asia Art Awards & Emerging Asia Artists Excursion to Jiading Confucian Temple & China Imperial Examination System Museum Excursion to Shanghai Arts and Design Academy, Chinese Traditional Crafts Group work Mentoring and technical organisation It was a fully packed first week in Shanghai. The convenient comfort of knowing a place we built in Hong Kong, was gone. Fresh start, new city, new questions – at least for most of the participants in the program: How do we order taxis, how do we buy a metro ticket to get around easily? Where are the good places to eat? Where do we get supplies for our group project? Which app is the best to translate Mandarin? How do you say …

Group Work Mentoring Sessions Silent presentations Bye-bye Dinner Travel to Shanghai on trains and planes The last week in Hong Kong started with the silent presentations on Tuesday. Each group had 30 mins to present research findings, concrete plans and ideas or experimental material from their running project. Projects that will be exhibited in Ming Contemporary Museum in Shanghai. Before we all had to say a temporary goodbye to some Hong Kong locals and a final farewell to the city, we enjoyed a great dinner altogether at a typical wet market restaurant in Kowloon City. On Friday, we travelled to our next destination. Within 8 hours the high-speed train took us through Mainland China to Shanghai, where the program continues for 2 weeks.

Individual group work Mentoring sessions After a full week of intense group formation in the last week, the following have teamed up together for the next phase and the exhibition at Ming Contemporary Museum in Shanghai. They all worked individually and met with Daniel, Nuria and Simon for mentoring sessions. Cindy, Yuyu, Raúl and Timo’s topic revolves around the broad question of ‘where do we come from and where do we go next?’. They work with the keywords, information and communication, space, time, change and environment. Seain, Gloria and Joe work with the feeling of obsession, expectation and attraction to objects. Milos, Rae, Lena and Leal have been looking at different social phenomenons; new identity, make up, voguing, live streaming as well as Chinese classical dance and traditional opera. Lisa, Nick and Lambert deal with the topic of voluntary loss. Tobi, Harrison, Aline, Riar, Duy, Cass, Colin worked on interviews. Money, Brooke, Rafael, Rose and Nuriia worked with the keywords ‘Sleep, Absence and More’. They took time to experiment within different activities, such as field trips, improv sessions or …

Working collaboratively can be inspiring and challenging at the same time. ‘In Process’ is a series of small reports following along each group for a day to find out how they interact and work collaboratively, what difficulties they might face and what strategies they follow. The insights offer a snippet from different stages on the way to their exhibition/performance at Ming Contemporary Art Museum Shanghai on November 8th. In the very early days of their project, I met Cindy I-Hsin Cheng, Jia Yu Wu, Timo Raddatz and Raúl Castro Estévez on a research day hopping from gallery to gallery. Previous Next I meet Cindy, Timo, Raul and Yuyu at noon outside a multi-story building in Central. They have visited 7 galleries in the morning already. Everyone is very hungry, so Raul leads the way across the broad street, passed the tram way. We leave Chater Road, home to many luxury brand flagship stores, and walk through a back street. The concrete ground is wet, AC’s are dripping onto our heads as we pass through the tunnel-like and smelly alley. …

Feedback HART Haus Improv Week Sharing of individual learning experiences, methods, personal and professional habits Discussion “Where is the line?” Input on collaboration strategies Idea pitch for next group phase Group building After one week away at HART Haus, it was almost like coming home to AVA Kai Tak Campus. We started off sitting in a circle to discuss the previous workshop with Simon and Andreas at HART Haus. For all of the students, the public performance was an exciting evening, which they enjoyed very much. Some found themselves in a performing mode, they had never experienced before and were very surprised about themselves and about how good they felt. However, not everyone felt comfortable with the structure of the workshop. Some had different expectations about the format of an improvisation week. Other feedback included, that the performance night was somehow too structured to have the label of improvisation. Some also would have preferred to work as a whole group instead of splitting in smaller groups. In the end, it was an experiment for everyone …

Group work and practice based explorations Mentoring Presentation of the first group work Reflection on group process and presentations Discussion and feedback about first block of the program The whole week was dedicated to the presentation/exhibition of the first group projects. Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday the students worked individually setting up, programming, rehearsing, discussing, arguing, overcoming language barriers, woodworking, coding, installing lights, texting, glueing or painting. On Thursday afternoon they presented their projects at AVA Kai Tak Campus. The day after we sat together to reflect and give feedback on the projects and the program in general. The final presentation of the group projects at AVA (a click on each picture will redirect you to the group process documentation)                            

Group work and practice based explorations Mentoring Lecture by Dr. Fiona Y. W.  Law on Urban Co-habitation in Disappearance  Street Cat Photography and Animal Advocacy in Hong Kong Lecture/Introduction by Hong Kong based Artist Trevor Yeung Introduction by Daniel Späti Field trips to Ocean Park Hong Kong, The Hong Kong Bird Market & Monkey Hill in Kam Shan Country Park Full day boat trip to Sai Kung Country Park The third week was not predetermined by a program. The students worked in groups on their first project, which will be presented in the following week. They immerse themselves in the semester topic Bonds & Ties for the first time. While some groups started working conceptually at the beginning of the week, others took some more time in forming the groups. At the end 7 groups – some work in pairs, others in a group of 7 – deal with different topics all related to bonds and ties: bondage, sexuality, strangers, time, space, privacy, human & non-human, cultural codes, symbols, conflicts, politics and protests. Dr. Fiona Y. W. Law  (Department of …

Come join us on an evening of experimental performances on 4th October 2019 (Friday), 7pm – 9pm at HART Haus. 27 young international artists and designers from the Transcultural Collaboration programme will be live improvising for you with sounds and visuals. The performances are the results of a one-week CoLab workshop facilitated by guest artists Andreas Siagian (ID) and Simon Dietersdorfer (AU). CoLab is an interdisciplinary laboratory on experimental collaborative practice presented in performative ways. CoLab would like to invite multidisciplinary artists to work together developing ideas for collaborations, learning through the process of experimentation, interaction and improvisation. Instead of a solo project, CoLab is only for collaboration, inviting artists to negotiate, adjusting and connecting with other artists in the form of collectives. Performances by: Tobias BIENZ, Duy BUI, Raúl CASTRO ESTÉVEZ, Clair Ka-kiu CHAN, CHEN Zhenglang, Cindy CHENG I-Hsin, FU Lingbo, Rafael GIL CORDEIRO, Gloria HERTIG, Brooke JACKSON, Nuriia KHASENOVA,  LEI Xuan, LEUNG Lok Kwan, Rose Zi-Rui LI, LIU Shiyan, MA Kam Leung, Choon Peng NG, QIAN Yuxuan, Timo RADDATZ, Syahriar Tri RIZALDI, Colin …

Self-presentations Mapping the semester topic Bonds & Ties Workshop with Elodie Pong Group building Workshop with Professor Sik Ying Ho, I support Jaqueline Wong …and die! Field trip to 480.0 Gender & Art Space in Yau Ma Tei This year’s semester topic looks at different forms of bonds and ties, including those with our body, family, friends, society, cultures, animals, plants or objects. We gathered in smaller group and mapped the wide territory of the topic and visualized and discussed our individual understanding of Bonds & Ties. For the workshop with Artist Elodie Pong, we were invited to bring 3–5 objects that relate or represent our professional inquiries. In a playful approach we studied the objects in their arrangement. We discussed the questions of how they are represented, how are the objects related to each other, the way they are arranged? How do we put meaning into things? How do people see art from different perspectives? Later, each of us created a collage with prints, images and photographs we have collected in the recent days …

Arrival in Hong Kong: Program-Kick off at AVA, Kai Tak Campus Self-presentations Lecture: Mark Gandolfi on Building Relationships Welcome Dinner in Sham Shui Po Exercises: Getting to know each other with Zhao Chuan Lecture: Hong Kong as a Laboratory of Global Cultural Identity by Mathew Gordon Excursion: Housing in Hong Kong & Historical Tour of Hong Kong The first week of the program was all about bonding and getting to know each other – and for many also getting to know the city of Hong Kong. Hong Kong locals welcomed the guest students with open arms and took the lead when it came to exploring the city’s busy streets. In different exercises and changing group formations we’ve got to dive into intense discussions, shared and exchanged perspectives and got to know each others practices. Psychologist Dr. Mark Gandolfi gave the first lecture on how we connect, bond and tie with ourselves and others. Marking psychology as the common denominator, he touched the semester topic from the perspectives of genetics, feelings and relationships. Gordon Mathews, Professor …