Supported
Ghost and John, curated by Sandra Lam
Radio Neighbourhood - Tanner's Hill
Today's performance will happen simultaneously with a performance taking place at Pump House Square, Bow Arts Raw Lab. Royal Albert Wharf, Royal Docks, London E16 2GX
This is our second iteration in a new series of community-based outdoor performance events Radio Neighbourhood across London. After a year of living with COVID-19, the performance provides new strategies to engage the community with live art in the post-pandemic world. Devised by a creative team of East and Southeast Asian artists, this dance drama tells stories about cross-cultural interactions and engages with post-humanist thinking. It explores humanity’s desire for the ideal society and addresses the most pressing concerns of the modern world, including migration and human rights.
The events will take place in the open space of residential houses in Deptford and Royal Docks. The audience will be able to enjoy the performances from home through their windows or balconies with the sound and music broadcasted over radio. Our first performance will be at Evelyn Estate which will be broadcasted over Internet radio through this link.
The second performance will be in collaboration with AAJA Radio, showing simultaneously at Deptford Tanner’s Hill and Royal Docks Pump House Square. If you would like, you can enjoy this performance to a soundtrack created by the artists, bring a pair of headphones and your smartphone and watch the dance unfold.
Open space outside Sister Midnight Records, 4 Tanner’s Hill, Deptford, London SE8 4PJ
The performance is a 20-minute outdoor dance drama with voiceover that involves conversations and interactions of two performers (human and alien), focusing on questions of home, displacement and memory. The story engages with ancient East Asian mythology and conveys cultural significance relating to issues of belief and identity, transcending cultural backgrounds and different communities. It explores people’s psychological conditions when facing pandemic and socio-political instabilities. In response to the recent hate crimes against Asians, the work in particular deals with issues of identity related to ethnicity, race and gender, and confronts the historical portrayal of those raced and gendered bodies.
With a core creative team of East and Southeast Asian (ESEA) heritage, it provides a platform to support artists who are currently underrepresented in the arts and culture industry in the UK. It is an ongoing performance project that we will be touring the story (score and script) and hiring ESEA local talents to be part of the team, including performers and musicians, to continue developing the work and to perform in the communities that they live in. We aim to make the work available to more spaces and reach a wider audience through touring across London, the UK and beyond.
This work is commissioned by Deptford X 2021 and Bow Arts.
#RadioNeighbourhood | @ghostandjohn | @lamwanyisandra | @hiddenkeileon
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Ghost and John are a Hong Kong multidisciplinary art duo who are best known for their innovative integration of performance and contemporary technologies. Drawing from their experiences of working within biology and computer science, they have developed a dynamic artistic practice that examines the intricacies of the body and nature, technological advances and folklore that accompany history. Their works have been presented internationally at The Place and the Vault Festival in London, ImPulsTanz in Vienna and Goethe-Institut in Hong Kong.
ABOUT THE CURATOR
Sandra Lam is an independent curator and writer based in London. Her curatorial research examines the politics of aesthetics and investigates how curating can contribute to an understanding of contemporary discourses, focusing on activism, migration and the environment. She has gained considerable experience curating exhibitions and public programmes that involve communities in social interaction at various non-profit art organisations in London including Enclave Lab, SafeHouse and Chisenhale Studios. She currently works as Curatorial Fellow at Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art.
CREDIT
Director, Script, Sound and Music: Ghost and John
Curator: Sandra Lam
Poster Illustration: Pui Yung Shum
Voice Actors: Jennifer Lim, Siu-See Hung
Live Performers: John Chan, Pui Yung Shum, Yun Cheng and Jason Yip
This year we have partnered with In The Room to host a digital Q&A with a selection of our artists. To put your questions to Ghost & John about their work, head over to Ask the Artist.
