Infectious disease spreads rapidly in densely populated places. During the outbreak of epidemics, the distance between people becomes the major barrier of how one protects oneself in order to survive. Participants will be asked to share personal stories about their body such as illnesses, wishes, or fears.
This performative workshop will explore the physical and psychological proximity between people to reimagine ways of relating to each other. Departing from the work of artist Enoch Cheng, Influenzers mobilises the idea of the living score that is built through collaboration. Guided by Cheng, the participants will develop movements through looking at, walking with, and sharing with one another. Through the development of this performance score, participants will tease out the subtleties between individual experience and that of a collective. The participants will then embody this score and perform it among the wider public. Previous training is not required. Participants will be expected to actively connect with each other without much physical contact.
Followed by the workshop, there will be a curator talk by Ying Kwok, curator of Contagious Cities: Far Away Too Close.
Enoch Cheng
Enoch Cheng is an independent artist. His practice spans the moving image, installation, dance, events, theatre, performance, writing, and curating. Concerned with the everyday subtleties in contemporary urban lives, his works explore recurrent themes of place, travel, fiction, memory, time, mythology, migration and extinction.
Ying Kwok
Ying Kwok is an independent curator based in Hong Kong. She works with a diverse range of art and cultural institutions nationally and internationally, from artist’s initiatives, art festivals, to public museums and the commercial sector. Her research based curating often synthesizes different art forms in contemporary visual art, from site specific commissions, performances, to film and video. Kwok is the curator for Contagious Cities: Far Away, Too Close for Tai Kwun Contemporary and Wellcome Trust, the lead curator of LOOK International Photography Festival 2017, and curator at M+ for Samson Young: Songs for Disaster Relief as Hong Kong presentation at the 57th Venice Biennale. Before embarking on her independent career, Kwok was the curator at the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art in Manchester UK, between 2006 and 2012.
In 2014, Kwok was awarded the Asia Cultural Council Fellowship. She is an international fellow in the Clore Leadership Programme 2018/19. Apart from curating, Kwok also founded Art Appraisal Club with a group of local art professionals in 2014, in order to encourage critical thinking and initiating effective art discussions in Hong Kong. The group provides regular exhibition reviews and their articles are published in magazines, various cultural networks and their own bilingual journal, Art Review Hong Kong.
