Stills from some films that I have watched as part of the research.

Films:

Billingham Folklore Festival 1965.

Minehead’s Obby Oss Festival.

The Sidmouth Folk Festival.

All the films are available via BFI Player.

During the residency period I will be expanding research that I undertook, while making ‘Niolam Ja Se Kochaneczke’ (2016).

Niolam Ja Se Kochaneczke explores potentialities of queer utopias, while looking at the relationship between history, ‘national values’ and power structures.

Through the work I revisited Eastern European folk traditions and whilst employing feminist and queer reading I questioned why queer love has never been preserved and celebrated in the folk history. I reclaimed these stories by subverting the narrative of ‘straight’ love songs to represent queer love stories instead.

My aim was to problematize how history is written and tradition is represented, often only to sustain the power structures that claim it ‘objective’. I intended to encourage the viewer to consider and experience history as a discourse made out of multiple, overlapping and contesting narratives rather than a single, fixed entity.

I questioned what the “national values” are / are claimed to be and look at the ‘fragility’ of national identity, threatened so easily by ‘otherness’ and queer subjectivities.

Niolam Ja Se Kochaneczke relocates queerness both historically and geographically. Queerness In Eastern Europe is often perceived as a contemporary phenomenon that arrived from Western Europe, rather than something that always had its presence. I want to acknowledge its historical place and reclaim histories that were  repressed. As well as this I want to speak of queerness in context of rural communities, as too often it is considered only within the urban setting.

The recordings were done in a traditional rural setting in East of Poland (Roztocze and Karpaty) with folk singers singing both in Polish and Lemkov (Ukrainian dialect).

This work is currently exhibited in local_30 gallery in Warsaw, Poland – part of POGANKI | HEATHENS, a group show curated by Agnieszka Rayzacher, featuring Karolina Breguła, Marta Bogdańska, Maria Kniaginin-Ciszewska, Katarzyna Górna, Kinga Michalska, Liliana Piskorska (Zeic), Aleka Polis, Karolina Sobel & myself.

The exhibition is directly inspired by The Heathen, considered the first Polish novel to address love and passion between women. Boy-Żeleński wrote: “sisterhood, that most perfect form of friendship, could lead to genuine love tragedies – and powerfully impregnate souls with suffering. Because The Heathen comes into being one year after those incidents.”

The relationships addressed in the exhibition are not always downright romantic. Close ties between women, mutual understanding and empathy have a long history and manifest themselves in women’s circles reactivated today, among other phenomena.

See the show till 5th June 2016 if in Warsaw, and also you can access it virtually via the local_30 website.

Utopia- Sir Thomas More 1516

The New Atlantis – Francis Bacon 1626

Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe 1719

Around 17~19 century ppl move from Euro to USA (740m population vs 800000 population). The term immigration was coined in the 17th century.

Then, Utopia experiment in USA in the 20 century, architect Frank Lloyd Wright, Paolo Soleri, Acrosanti

Vendredi ou les Limbes du Pacifique (Friday) – Michel Tournier, 1967

Internet as Utopia from Expanded Education For The Paperless Society- Nam Jun Pak, 1968 *link to NJP’s future prediction

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Each 100 years, artists try to create work that shakes the world and reflects it’s time. Combining reality and fiction to picture something that is there and yet to be discovered or can’t be pictured.

In the seventeenth century, knowledge is power, the science and technologic jump and progress Scientific revolution change how people see the world. Then the Age of Enlightenment and Age of Reason came, they dare to know. By the end of the eighteenth century the idea of Utopia no longer restricted to space, it shifted it to time, the future, which is more accessible than the unknown territories. The distance that makes possible the critique of reality remains.

If time is the fourth dimension. If the three-dimensional space of Utopia does not exist, then perhaps how we map the future will concern its history.

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When I followed the Hong Kong Protests daily, what captured me the brilliant use of colors. Not just in clothing and tools but as forms of communication. As with all things, I always filter how I see the world through my Elder’s teachings (Elder Isaac Day of Serpent River First Nations). Some of the colors that held the most sway overall were Yellow, Red, Black and White. In Isaac’s teachings that would be Honesty, Kindness, Caring and Sharing. As I reflect on these teachings and think about the Hong Kong Protests I find these teachings completely and aptly applicable.

Of all the signs I choose to replicate the ones that resonated with me the most is “Don’t Shoot Our Kids”, “I Will Not Kill Myself”, “Stop Killing Us” “Be Water! We are formless. We are shapeless. We can flow. We can crash. We are like water. We are HONGKONGERS.” and Hong Kong People Hearts Never Die in Cantonese. I think it is important to profile that the police brutality in Hong Kong has largely targeted the childen and youth, medics and journalists, hoping to scare others into submission. Without the children and youth the movement is ashes on the ground. So I am showing solidarity and my own prayers that the Kids are protected. It is a sad state when children have to take to the streets to protest their own government and write wills to do so.

“I Will Not Kill Myself” was the single most emotional sign I had to replicate. Thinking of the allegations of “suicide” that clearly are of well know prominent protesters including Chan Yin-Lam (15 year old), Chow Tsz-lok (22 year old), Alex Chow and so many unnamed victims targeted by the Hong Kong Police Force, and their enacted state sanctioned brutality during the protests of 2019 and 2020. What struck me in my research is how difficult it was to find a list of these names. I hope these moments and acts are not lost to the tendrils of history. A not so gentle reminder of the great human rights abuses that are being perpetuated in Hong Kong against it’s citizens as we speak. “Stop Killing Us” isn’t just a poster it’s a reality for Hong Kong citizens right now as we speak.

Finally closing this circle of grief is still the strong hope and message of Hong Kong People, Hearts Never Die written in Cantonese. I believe in the future of our peoples. As long as our hearts live with the fire of the future and we flow like water, then this hope and fight for freedom also never dies. Until we are all free.

I don’t recall what the festival is called but a search on Google tells me it’s called the Ching Ming Festival. Ching Ming and the Mid Autumn Festivals were by far my favorite time of year overshadowing even Chinese New Year. Both festivals featured fire prominently and reminding me of aspects of my all time favorite time of year: Halloween.

Ching Ming being a festival we went and visited our ancestors resting places, talking to them, honoring them with offerings of food and wine, while burning joss money and sometimes even paper condos and servants. I loved the fire, the bigger the better, I loved feeding the fire with our folded joss money, I loved watching other families offer condos, suits, phones and servants to the all consuming flames. The whole day of adventures: going from site to site and we would end the day with a feast as if we were celebrating with the ancestors together. We would all sit down on my Great Grandfather’s grave and eat a sumptuous meal of foods, fruits and wine often amongst the sweet aroma of ripening mango’s on the trees around us.

The Mid Autumn festival with the lanterns and bonfires was another highlight of the year. I delighted in making lanterns that I knew I would be able to burn later in the night, parent sanctioned and all. I love fire to this day. Some of my other favorite things to this day being the moon and rabbits, Mid Autumn festival was the pinnacle of my favorite things: Fire, Moon worship, Rabbits and making things. For the adults it was also time to find love and there would be markets of fresh flowers and mazes with notes dangling from higher up, each seeking love or a particular lover. The lights, the flowers, the fires and the lanterns all made for a fantastical childhood that is unparalleled in Canada.

There is something magical about fire to me always and forever. I still remember keenly the smell of josh sticks in the air, the special candles we used, I remember collecting moon cake tins with various indentations to make interesting molds for the night of melting candles. Most of all I loved the ritual of folding and burning joss money. My Grandmother taught me how to fold these papers with the golden square in the middle, we folded it to mimic the old school currency of the gold ingot, know also as a yuanbao.

I grew up in a time in Hong Kong where mythologies and legends were real life. To me phoenix’s and dragons were the real deal, ghost and ancestors walked amongst us and the Gods and Goddesses was a relationship full of wonder, fantasy and fire. May our prayers rise with the smoke to the Gods and Goddesses. It brings me a great peace, at 45, to start to bring these elements to my own home in this foreign land, creating an Altar to the same Goddess as my mother did for so many years continuing a lineage and tradition older then the words I write on this page.