Glitch (in the system)
In an effort to keep myself sane in this deeply upsetting year of 2020, I am reflecting and focusing on some of the beautiful and positive collaborative work, international travel and incredible Artists I have been working with over the last couple of years.
Last year, in July 2019 saw the culmination of a 3 year international Residency in Hong Kong that I was part of. The international Colab was an idea initiated by Kee Hong Low from the West Kowloon Cultural District in Hong Kong. WKCD teamed up with Forest Fringe (UK) and the Basement Theatre (NZ) as curatorial partners to invite 9 experienced Artists from a range of disciplines to be part of a 3 year international residency focusing on giving Artists who have been creating for a long time; an opportunity to catch their breath, to experience some radical care, to share artistic process, industry discourse, cultural exchange and opportunities to access one another’s skills and practice over time. To potentially collaborate internationally was of course on the table too, but equally no pressure if that didn’t happen.
Each meet up over the three years was based in each host Country, in and around a festival environment. There were 3 Artists from Scotland, 3 from NZ and 3 from Hong Kong.
I didn’t know any of the Residency Artists involved beforehand, including the Scottish Artists. I had heard of the Scottish Artist’s work and caught some of it but I had never met or worked with them before.
It can be scary walking into a room where you know no-one and even worse when they do know each other, but I am good at that kind of thing and have come to learn, not everyone will put themselves in that situation,. But if you do find the balls to do uncomfortable things and also see them through, you definitely will win and grow!
In 2017 when we all first met during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, I lucked out and instantly clicked with Abby Chan, Abby is a Choreographer/Performer and Movement Director from Hong Kong with an extensive, cross art-form, beautiful body of work. Abby is based between HK and NYC and we share many similarities in our work, our creative processes and how we live our lives. I will blog again specifically about my life changing experience as part of the international colab and my friendship and special collaborative relationship with Abby as I am still processing it.
For now, I want to focus on the short piece of work, ‘Glitch’ and the international creative process behind creating it to share at Hong Kong’s Xiqu Centre in July 2019 as part of my Residency outcomes.
July 2019 was an important time of change with such political and community unrest in Hong Kong and I am forever grateful I was there at that time as an Artist but also as a human being, to support my friends from there and to learn and understand first hand what was going on there politically and personally.
I have been making work for over 20 years as an independent artist, that feels like a very long time right now. I am not a regularly funded Artist so it is always an exhaustive undertaking when you are often self producing as well as creating the work and looking for the right collaborators to involve in the work. I wear too many hats, but I am very conscious of that therefore, addressing it.
Anyway, outside of the Colab Residency, I was talking with lots of new artists to me after a very long time working solo. So rewinding back a few months to before I met Abby, in the February of 2017 I was in New York doing an International Residency at the Carlton Arms Art Hotel in Gramercy. I was also combining my time on my Residency there with undertaking some of my own research on hip hop culture, (where better to do that than NYC, the birthplace, right) towards developing a bigger work about loss that I was interested in moving along.
I went along to the hip hop subway series, organised through La Mama experimental theatre. When I booked my ticket, I was rather curiously invited by email to meet at the back of the platform of the A train to begin my experience, an exciting start!
A few audience gathered and then we headed on to the A train heading uptown, getting off at the platform in Harlem. I don’t remember him being there at the beginning at the meeting station so I am unsure when he got on the train but this was when I noticed Seth.
Seth Hirsch is a rapper and songwriter from Cincinnati, Ohio and he was living and working in NYC at the time. Seth was free-styling on the A train as part of the experience and I instantly was captivated and wanted to listen to his every word. The urgency that is very present in spoken word and rap driven storytelling is often missing for me in straight performance/writing and Seth’s energy and style were electric. All of the artists that day were special and we all ended up at the Funkadelic Studios in Manhattan afterwards for a party and more brilliance from everyone ensued.
Seth made the effort to come along to experience the work I made at the Hotel during my residency too and so, we kept in touch.
Running alongside this, I’d met Abby now and we were also collaborating and in constant touch as part of our international Residency and we were talking about all kinds of creative things together. I had also met the super talented Scottish Artist/Musician/Composer, Ross Whyte on another Residency I did in Scotland in 2018 at Cove Park where we had also both clicked quickly. So there was lots of rich dialogue going on around us all developing and experimenting with ideas together. I was the one constant, the glue in it all and would work with each Artist isolated one on one over time as we were all spread out over the globe.
Seth and I had also been talking about instruments for telling stories which led me to find an amazing Artist, Zexuan Qiao from Shanghai who was studying in Glasgow and who does many incredible things including playing and making 3D printed instruments. Zexuan and I started talking together about ideas and he came to our space in Dundee with his instruments, along with Abby (who was here doing a Residency with me) all the way from her base in Brooklyn. It was a joyful creative day where we did so much work together - they were both so easy and refreshing to work with and it felt very special that I had Artists from China and Hong Kong collaborating together in my little space in Dundee.
Remembering Seth freestyling on the A train and our common experience of loss, I wanted to bring him in on my idea around loss as part of ‘Glitch”. So I invited him to write me some words and though very busy with his own musical career, he kindly did.
I have been developing work around loss for many years. But I had never been able to articulate via words the depth of feeling involved in sudden or premature loss, or the challenging legacy that’s left behind, living across decades with the deafening sound of a person’s absence.
Seth is such a beautiful and observant writer, he has a natural gift and he managed to articulate everything from his personal perspective about loss so honestly and succinctly but at the same time convey the commonality and universality between grievers in his short piece of writing. Something I have never been able to articulate via words across more than half of my life.
Seth’s words so strong, I decided to make them the core of ‘Glitch’ and build all the various other elements and ingredients around him. Ross came up to our space to do a wee residency with me and that is when he, with his many skills, stepped in to help me create the most beautiful soundscape using all of the raw materials, words, voices and layers that I had been gathering over time. We also included a selection of instruments in the soundscape that each artist had carefully chosen and we created a short film and developed a visual language with Abby that she performed live in the actual space. We shared the results; a human specific collaboration, with a micro audience of around 20 people in HK.
It was a beautiful experiment and experience and I am very happy with the collaborative process and what we created and shared in Hong Kong. I learned such a lot from each Artist and about my own creative process as a Director. My biggest revelation being that this complicated collaborative experience with multiple Artists has really helped me to trust myself more and to relax into my process and enjoy the journey. And though I am always experimenting with new things, my work is always deeply rooted in truth and my curiosity in humanity and my love for human beings. I like to put a microscope on our commonality rather than our difference, I think that is what Art can do to help us all hold space for one another in this life.
I think that is a really important message right now at this difficult time, whilst the world looks set to implode, that we must hold space for each other. I would like to get better at that, to be there for others with no judgement, to meet and accept them for who they are and where they are at.
To keep creating and collaborating and talking across countries and cultures to remind ourselves that really, we are all the same - with a lot of the same problems, losses, experiences, disappointments and joys.
That we are all made of flesh and blood - human beings first and foremost! Not Countries and Governments, systems, borders and corrupt medias, but individual human beings who, one human at a time really can change the world together if we are open and can work collaboratively. And share our cultures and truths with one another without wanting anything in return. I really really believe in that! I think that is where our power for real change lies.
I was given a little bit of seed money from Creative Scotland off the back of my international Residency to continue my collaborative relationship with Abby and we were set to do some work together in NYC in May this year. Unfortunately COVID-19 had other ideas. And I would love to continue working with everyone else involved thus far, but it looks unlikely.
Funds for Abby and I are safely aside and our work on pause. But Abby and I will keep making work together, that is about the only thing I am sure of in my work right now…
Unless I can secure the full amount of funds that can support the development of an experimental international collaboration of this scale and with all of the same collaborators on board to take this work forwards; I will be leaving this idea just where it is.
None of the Artists can be replaced. It would not feel right to develop such a personal idea without the same core collaborators who gave so generously.
It might also be time for me to put thinking about developing challenging personal themes in my work aside for a bit.
Time for a comedy…
United we stand as collaborators and also in our personal grief and loss with Hong Kong.
Eternal thanks to Forest Fringe, West Kowloon Cultural District, Basement Theatre, New Zealand, Creative Scotland, Creative New Zealand, British Arts Council, all the humans along the way :)
Ross Whyte - Soundscape Design/Piano (Scotland)
Abby Chan - Choreography/Performer/Movement/Creative Twin (Hong Kong)
Zexuan Qiao - Chinese Xiao (China)
Robin Mason - Cello (Scotland)
Seth Hirsch - Words (USA)
Joan Lily Scappaticcio - Balance (Scotland)
Ben Scappaticcio - Short Film Editing (Scotland)
Sharron Devine - Direction (Scotland)
Glitch, an idea, made collaboratively and shared in West Kowloon at the Xiqu Centre in July 2019 #beboldfreespace
(image of Seth by @theimagetaker)