Look Two Ways (Installation Exhibition)
Hong Kong Dance Portraits by 5 Filmmakers
Look Two Ways is a two-channel installation work by Tsang Tsui-shan, Hugh Cho, Elysa Wendi, Chiu Chih-hua and Remu Iwai. These five filmmakers explore the idea of portraiture through a provocation by choreographer/filmmaker Sue Healey to create two short moving portraits that reflect their current time and space and the individuals that dance within it. Reimagining their current reality, and also the future in Hong Kong, the project features different local dance artists from a range of disciplines.
- Chiu Chih-hua: “13th”, featuring Lim Wei-wei and Cai Ying
- Hugh Cho: “Factory Alert”, featuring Steve Ng, Hochi, To Chi-sing and Kenneth Sze
- Remu Iwai: “Isle/Alley”, featuring Yang Hao “Isle” and Kenny Leung “Alley”
- Tsang Tsui-shan: “Encounter”, featuring Mui Cheuk-yin and Lau So-kam
- Elysa Wendi: “Ice & Brume”, featuring Elaine Kwok “Ice” and Virginia Chu “Brume”
Designed to extend ideas about portraiture from the perspectives of the Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore filmmakers, this curated exhibition is a partner work to ON VIEW: HONG KONG, an installation and performance project by Sue Healey with 10 local dance artists.
Sue’s provocation to the filmmakers:
Portraits can reveal unspoken and powerful ideas about identity – creating deep connections between the observer and the observed. A portrait fundamentally involves the act of seeing and being seen. It requires a deep analysis of a person, revealing layers of ideas about the self, and our relationship to the world we live in. Using the unique landscape and history of Hong Kong, create two short portraits that use movement as the language to portray identity.
Venue:
New ArtisTree foyer
Date & Time:
1-4 November 2017 (Wednesday-Saturday): 9:00am- 6:00pm
5 November 2017 (Sunday): 9:00am-2pm
Free Admission
13th by Chiu Chih Hua (Taiwan)
Director: Chiu Chih-hua
Using Hong Kong as the backdrop, these two films evoke an overall air of instability, conveying restlessness and chaos through movement, emotion, the voices of an online community and a momentum that is both uncertain and unsettling. Facing similar anxieties, Taiwan resisted in a different, more gentle way, dispelling fear through solace. In a tight-knit society, individual emotions can reflect the overall sentiment of the community.
©Kairon Liu
Chiu Chih-hua work a lot on image-art. Wandering between reality and illusion, his works involve statics and kinetics. Inspired by documentary photography, in the early years, Chiu worked on single-channel filming which performed in urban streetscape. As time goes by, Chiu changed his form of art-making from photography to model-making and keeps working on image, space and model art creations. Since 2014, Chiu creates a new image art through screendance by collaborating with sound artists, dancers, choreographers and filmmakers from different countries. This open another aspect for him to dialogue with the city in urban art creation.
Factory Alert by Hugh Cho (Hong Kong)
We are intruders, invading this space
In here, we have not been recognised nor denied
Existing in darkness
Apart from us, it’s just us
Heading into the unknown
We look for pleasure, we enjoy our own space
Everyone has their own way of thinking
Everyone has their own goals
In here, we have not been recognised nor denied
In here
We exist in darkness
Yet we feel radiant
Henry Wong@S2 Production
A graduate of the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts, Cho interest in choreography began during his time as Artist in Residence with Unlock Dancing Plaza, between 2010 and 2014. In 2013, Cho choreographed and performed in the dance video Eternal Sunshine shown in the Short Film Corner at the Cannes Film Festival. In 2015 he directed the short dance film yellow alert during New Works Forum: Screendance co-presented by West Kowloon Cultural District and City Contemporary Dance Company, and was commissioned to further develop the film to be premiered in Jumping Frames International Dance Video Festival 2017. In 2016, he was invited by the Japan Contemporary Dance Network to Okinawa and Hokkaido for exchange and creation. His dance piece Made in Hong Kong was invited to the largest international contemporary dance market and festival internationale tanzmesse nrw in Germany in the same year. Cho is now based in Hong Kong as a freelance dancer, choreographer and part-time Chinese opera acrobat.
Isle/Alley by Remu Iwai (Hong Kong)
Director: Remu Iwai
It seems like we’re in a narrow alley
Or like we’re the last creature in an uninhabited isle
Extrusion
Being pushed at the edge of our city
Exile
Getting into self-imposed exile at the end of time
Is what has not been achieved only achievable slowly and laboriously?
What cannot be said, we can dance in our sleep!
Should we reincarnate? Stay and wait? Accept that we are used to loss?
Abandoned poets and dreams
Imprisoned travellers and voices
Dance, dance, dance!
Illustrated by chankwunfee
Remu IWAI (Kong Wai Remus NG) is a cross-disciplinary artist based in Hong Kong, creative chef of arts group "room 1224 & associates". He always exchange and transform ideas from different disciplines, e.g. site-specific theatre, film montage theory, or even Rube Goldberg machine… to explore issues of human life situations, vanishing cities, personal memories...etc.
Recent works: experimental dance video X Exit - Useless Machine (WRO Media Art Biennale 2017, Poland), dance film Soul is just a Fragment of Ether (2017, created during Artist-in-Residency in Malakta Art Factory, Finland), performance Hemispherical Red and Black – A 2047 Odyssey (2016, Hong Kong), mockumentary No Such Place (2013, a Hong Kong-Wales collaborative interdisciplinary project in Chapters Arts Centre, Cardiff, UK) and experimental video I am looking at you looking at me looking∞ (2011, Hong Kong).
Encounter by Tsang Tsui-shan (Hong Kong)
Director: Tsang Tsui-shan; Photo: Lai Lon Hin
Mui Cheuk-yin and I are Hong Kong artists from different generations and disciplines. When I first met her in Brussels in 2015, I was impressed by her solo dance piece and became curious about her story. Her movements were so pure and unique. As a Hong Kong first generation dancer, how did she gradually become one of the most prestigious dance artists? Who motivated and inspired her? What is her story?
I would like to take this chance to explore the stories between two generations of dancers in Hong Kong. I have invited Mui Cheuk-yin and her first teacher in Hong Kong – Ms Lau So Kam to tell their stories. Both of them are overseas Chinese, Mui is from Myanmar while Lau is from Indonesia. Dance brought them together.
This production explores the relationship between dance and emotions through the connection, mentoring and legacy of the dancers. The film is divided into two parts: the first is a pas de deux where Mui and Lau move together, echo and shadow each other and interact in ways that reflect their close relationship. Sometimes moving as a pair, sometimes individually, their subtle movements and emotions express their stories, their relationship, and the comfort they have given each other over the years they have both lived away from their home countries.
In the second part, Mui dances solo, separating herself from her partner to examine how her beginnings shaped her present and the dance moves that have become significant over time. Personal experiences differ, the city changes, the props and steps are the same but the dancer’s energy has changed. Against the backdrop of Hong Kong, blending traditional and modern elements, the dancers have a frank dialogue with the city. The film ends with Mui and Lau coming together again, calmly contemplating the future of Hong Kong.
©Michael Wong
Best New Director of the 31st Hong Kong Film Award 2012. Beginning with short film productions, her works have been presented internationally. Her films have typically focused on the humanitarian grounds. In 2008 her first directed feature film Lovers On the Road won the Best Drama Award of the 8th South Taiwan Film Festival. And her second feature Big Blue Lake was succeeded internationally, it had won the Jury Special Award of the Golden Koala Chinese Film Festival 2013 and the Asian New Talent Jury Prix of the Shanghai International Film Festival 2012. Tsang finished her French/ Hong Kong co-production feature documentary Flowing Stories in 2014, and her latest Drama Scent also released in Mid of August 2014. In recent years, Tsang has actively participated in projects related to environmental issues and disadvantaged communities, receiving the FilmAid Asia Humanitarian Award in 2016.
Ice & Brume by Elysa Wendi (Hong Kong/ Singapore)
Director: Elysa Wendi
For me, the idea of the portrait is the essence of how one is remembered.
Memories can be beautiful but deceptive. The film triggered the memory of the relationship between how one is seen and captured. Seeing and being seen; ice and its vapour… capturing the moment of “being seen” is a delicate process.
In that moment of questioning existence and perspective, I hope to capture the two Hong Kong dance artists in the different states of water; one in the frozen state of ice, the other in the choreographic rush of mist. Both temporal.
Between absence and presence, appearing and disappearing, I seek poetry in the portrait of the dancers and their movements in the states of ice and brume.
©Elysa Wendi
Preoccupied with the abstraction of memory from place, time and biographical traces, Elysa Wendi currently explores her works in film, photography and performance.
In 2013, Wendi received a mentorship grant from National Arts Council Singapore to study with Chinese filmmaker Ying Liang (2013-2015) and co-founded Cinemovement, a platform to host dance film laboratory together with film producer Jeremy Chua in 2015. Elysa Wendi graduated with an MFA (Distinction) in Choreography from HKAPA in 2015. She is now residing in Hong Kong and working between Hong Kong and Singapore.