Research Project

Body Knows |
Participatory Somatic Memory Research and Image Archive

Year of production: 2023-Now

 

An archive of images drawn by different people on intensive sensory memories that have left a lasting impression on their lives, whereas the drawing is followed by a dance therapy approach exercise lead by the artist Vivian Wong to release emotional tension, and find catharsis through movement. This project aims to create a supportive community where bodily experience abd emotions can be acknowledged, shared, and transformed.

Project supported by particpants from somatic workshops lead by
Vivian Wong in Eaton Hotel HK, Asian Art Archive and BASE

Sounding Bodies: Intermedia in Hong Kong
Host by Folded Paper Dance & Theatre Limited 
Year of production: 2021

Contributed as an Artistic Researcher

A dance and intermedia project that examines everyday life in urban and natural sites across Hong Kong through dance laboratories, sculptural installations, and mobile performance events.

Sounding Bodies involves a research-and-creation process that explores sound sculptures, multi-sensory objects, portable architectures, and methods for dance-music jamming in ways that honour the cultural diversity of Hong Kong. The project investigate Buddhist influences on classical and contemporary dance in Hong Kong and India; the history and practices of intermedia; and disability aesthetics.

 

Official Website
Photography by Vivian WONG

Death in Stanley Kwan films: 
Escapism and anxiety during the handover period 
Hong Kong Studies BA Research Paper (2022)
Mentored by Dr. Stephen Chu Yiu Wai

Focusing on the Stanley Kwan’s Love Unto Waste(1986), Rouge(1987), Center Stage(1991), this research paper will analyze the escapism revealed in Kwan’s film in the historical-culture context of the Hong Kong handover period via close readings of the allegorical representation of death in Kwan’s films and related scholarly works. By interpreting the allegorical death and sense of dying in Kwan’s films, this paper argues that the death and sense of dying in Kwan’s films represent the anxiety Hong Kong people encountered during the handover period, and lead to the discussion of escapism happens when Hong Kong people encounter unpredictable political changes, which would be reviewed in the context of Hong Kong handover. By suggesting various self-suppression escape mentalities when Hong Kong people encounter uncontrollable socio-political changes, this study of mass escapism hopes to provide a way to understand the aftermath of Hong Kong people through the
culture of escape and alternative exits other than the grand discourse of
colonialism and imperialism.

 

Paper access by email request.