We’re really fortunate to have artists nnscya (Annisa Cheung) and Wong Winsome Dumalagan visiting London from Hong Kong this May. nnscya’s and Winsome’s practices are representative of the practical and imaginary responses to their lives in Hong Kong and the wider region. In terms of the media they work with—in Winsome’s case film and installation, and in nnscya’s, sound and music—I’ve always been struck by how meaningful and engaging the directions they take have been, their aesthetics reflecting a reality that allows for dream-like observations and a magical reinterpretation of mundaneness; in terms of the creative scenes of Hong Kong, they have feet in both the official and the underground, which is perhaps a characteristic trait of relatively small communities.
Right now both the official and the underground are extremely vibrant in Hong Kong, but I am particularly interested in the latter which is forced to develop its own forms and spaces with limited institutional support. nnscya and Winsome cut their teeth at Hong Kong’s influential Twenty Alpha venue – an archetypal underground venue with all the complexities and contradictions that implies, and which has nurtured an extensive group of multi-genre artists over the years. Due to my own involvement in the local scenes and my research directed at their spaces, I have come into contact with nnscya and Winsome under a number of guises: I’ve seen them perform in music venues and present their work in art spaces, and I’ve also worked with both of them directly on events, including screening one of Winsome’s previous films and a live performance by nnscya. So it’s great to be able to present their work to a new audience in London as these artists deserve to be better known beyond Hong Kong.
nnscya works across the sound art and club music scenes, the borders between which are relatively porous in Hong Kong and embrace the integration of a highly diverse set of genres and practices, from functional club music to evocative sonic environments. Her performances straddle electronic music compositions taking cues from dream pop and indie, while her improvisation investigates sound’s structural forms and her own body’s acts of sound production. The body is heard through processed tuba playing and her own voice, bringing these together in emotionally touching but troubling performances. Winsome’s films are often marked by complex montages representing her research travels to the fringes of human habitation and encroachment, finding the impact of human and non-human social lives represented by the endless constructions which she records. These constructions violently insert themselves into an original environment, but the environments nevertheless survive the encounter, mutated perhaps but flourishing long after the human bodies have departed or been ejected.
For this event in London’s Eat the Sunshine . Down the Sun artist-run space, Winsome will present the film The Vault of the Cloven Void 歇息日後，籬笆倒塌的園 which includes a soundtrack by nnscya, and on the night Winsome will also provide visuals for nnscya when they perform together. Bringing their work together for this event places each artist’s work in the context of the other’s – what is the relation between Winsome’s social scenes with nnscya’s bodily sounds, and can the experience of nnscya’s often lugubrious, mournful, echoing sounds be understood as the sonic ambience of Winsome’s mist- and rubble-strewn settings?
This event will be a great opportunity to experience for the first time in London nnscya and Winsome’s work as solo artists and in collaboration – presenting the complex facets of their practices alongside each other.
For more information and to buy tickets for this event, visit: https://gel.now/events/286
