SPSL – A to Y (Revisited)

SPSL / A to Y proposes a partial taxonomy and a-chronological index of my artistic practice, as a series of speech acts and tactics that directly and indirectly speak to notions and contradictions of “Chineseness”. Having worked variously across moving image, installation, performance and text over nearly 20 years, this visual / performative paper is less a narrative of progression or arrival (“from here to there” or “how I got here”), than a narrative of awkward returns (“here I am again…”).
… 97 Proofs / After Words / Altar Notes / Art Vapours / Awards / Citius, Altius / DEAL / DIY Ballroom/Live / DIY Biennale Ballroom / Faster, Higher / FCHKUK / Golden / Lean To / Lightness / Making Ways / Mobile Chorus / Monumental Bargain / NEWS / REEL / RoCH Fans & Legends / Someone Special / Songs / Susan’s Room / Un- / Unravelling / Vistas / Walk / Don’t Walk / Witness / Years…
(Various projects, 1994-ongoing)
From a necessarily shifting post-colonial diasporic perspective, I find myself repeatedly running at or away from “(British-Hong Kong)-Chineseness” – an impossible idea and destination. At turns visible and invisible among others seemingly privileged, encumbered or otherwise by ethno-national distinctions, every instance of speaking and staging, re-presenting and re-playing, offers the potential for some kind of dislocation, disjuncture, or “lag”. I am mindful of this, as I cut through archives and Astroturf, replete with bad puns and pole-vaulters, re-making condor legends and choruses. Obliquely or by proxy, I image and imagine my own uncertain diasporic “Chineseness” amid parochial encounters with the “global”. Remixing ballroom and Cantopop, wuxia fandom and fantasy, SPSL / A to Y aims to invoke “Chineseness” as a temporary geography and endlessly negotiable itinerary: circuitous, uneven and open-ended, a fragmented and contradictory multiplicity of localities and vocalities.