Event
'Nunchaku Dub', album by Nunchaku Mike and Li Babies, 2023, cover art by Dinu Li

Speaking Nearby

from
on
-
-
until
on
22
-
07
-
23
When
from
until
22
July
2023
14:00 - 17:00
Book Tickets

Join the artists (susan) pui san lok, Dinu Li and Ho Rui An for an afternoon of screenings, sound works and artist talks that explore the politics and poetics of voice.

What does it mean to ‘have’ a voice? How might the use of ‘indirect’ speech, oral narratives, music and poetic language sound out unheard and underrepresented histories of migration, labour and community? These questions are especially resonant when considering the stereotype of East and Southeast Asian-identifying people in the UK and elsewhere as a ‘silent’, ‘invisible’, ‘model minority’ – rarely seen and heard in public and political life, but no less subject to racial discrimination and violence, as evidenced most recently by the rise in hate crimes following the outbreak of the Covid-19 global pandemic.  

Such senseless acts of violence call for affected communities to speak ‘out’, ‘against’ or ‘about’ these issues from a position of authority and agency. Yet, as the Vietnamese American filmmaker and theorist Trinh T. Minh-ha remarked, ‘truth never yields itself in anything said or shown.’ To this end, she proposed ‘speaking nearby’ as an alternative means of voicing marginalised histories and experience. In her words, ‘speaking nearby’ infers a ‘speaking that does not objectify, does not point to an object as if it is distant from the speaking subject of absent from the speaking place. A speaking that reflects on itself and can come very close to the subject without, however, seizing or claiming it.’ 

The event features work by three ESEA artists that explore the critical potential of ‘speaking nearby’: (susan) pui san lok’s two-channel sound installation ‘Centenary’ (2022), Ho Rui An’s video work ‘24 Cinematic Points of View of a Factory Gate in China’ (2023), as well as several of the pieces in Dinu Li’s new solo exhibition ‘A Phantom’s Vibe’. These works will be played throughout the event, and the artists will be present to engage in dialogue with the audience.    

This event is organised by Dr Wenny Teo (Senior Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Art, The Courtauld Institute of Art), Xiaowen Zhu (Director, esea contemporary) and Dot Zhihan Jia (Curator, esea contemporary), in collaboration with The Courtauld Institute of Art.

*Trinh T. Minh-Ha, in Nancy N. Chen, ‘Speaking Nearby: A conversation with Trinh T. Minh-ha’ Visual Anthropology Review, Vol 8, No 1, Spring 1992, pp 82-91.

susan pui san lok < 駱 佩 珊 > susan, lok pui san, REWIND/REPLAY, 2022. Site-specific installation with 5-channel sound, video, magnetic tape, lights, stands, microphones, script/scores, carpet, cushions, 50' 05” loop.
susan pui san lok < 駱 佩 珊 > susan, lok pui san, REWIND/REPLAY, 2022. Site-specific installation with 5-channel sound, video, magnetic tape, lights, stands, microphones, script/scores, carpet, cushions, 50' 05” loop.
susan pui san lok < 駱 佩 珊 > susan, lok pui san, 2018. Photo by Pete Carr.
Ho Rui An, 24 Cinematic Points of View of a Factory Gate in China, 2023, 4K video, 24′ 45″.
Ho Rui An, 24 Cinematic Points of View of a Factory Gate in China, 2023, 4K video, 24′ 45″.
Ho Rui An, photo by Eike Walkenhorst.
Nunchaku Dub, album cover art by Dinu Li
Nunchaku Dub, album cover art by Dinu Li
Back-a-Yard Brew, album cover art by Dinu Li.
Back-a-Yard Brew, album cover art by Dinu Li.
Portrait of Dinu Li, courtesy of the artist.
No items found.
0 / 0
Caption

susan pui san lok < 駱 佩 珊 > (susan), lok pui san, Centenary, 2022. Long poem and two-channel sound work, 34 mins. 

Originally commissioned by Create London for the Becontree Centenary, susan pui san lok’s Centenary evokes entangled narratives of Chinese migration within wider colonial histories, touching on the artist’s own experience growing up in a post-war council house on the Essex/London border. Becontree, located in Dagenham (was Essex, now London) and once the largest public housing estate in Europe, is often held to represent the fulfilment of the 1919 post-war government’s pledge to re-build 'homes fit for heroes'. Centenary cuts across this celebratory ‘moment’, to complicate the dominant white working-class narrative with tangled tales of migration from China, spanning three centuries and several continents. From Limehouse to Liverpool, UK is home to the oldest Chinese population in Western Europe, yet these lives – at turns educated, impoverished, exploited, idealised, exoticised and demonised – remain little known. Centenary alludes to suppressed histories and latent hostilities, and ambivalent 'returns' to Hong Kong, before and after the handover. Centenary is the second in a cycle of three works: Altar Notes (2012), Centenary (2022) and Ghosts (in progress). Future iterations of Centenary as a moving image and multichannel work are currently in development.

Acknowledgements: Written, directed and produced by susan pui san lok. Read by David KS Tse and Crystal LK Yu. Recorded, edited and mixed by Cam Griffiths. Commissioned by Create London, supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Ho Rui An, 24 Cinematic Points of View of a Factory Gate in China, 2023, 4K video, 24′ 45″.

Between 2013 and 2014, surveillance cameras were secretly installed in front of the factory gates of several Chinese companies which had been recently listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The so-called due diligence-based investment company responsible for the operation sought to use the footage to expose fraud by showing how the amount of activity at their factory gates fell short of reflecting the revenue figures reported by these companies. In 24 Cinematic Points of View of a Factory Gate in China, these images are resituated within a genealogy that extends back to the Lumieres’ film showing workers walking out of a factory gate. As narrated by a fictional filmmaker who has been approached by an unnamed American investor to review the surveillance footage through a 'cinematic point of view', the film spans over a century of European, American and Chinese cinematic history to examine how the Revolution that brought the workers back into the factory as its rightful owners would culminate in a contemporary scenography of late capitalism where there appears to be not enough workers leaving the factory.

Biographies
Ho Rui An
susan pui san lok
Dinu Li
Wenny Teo
About this series
Communities in the Making
No items found. Check out our Exhibitions Page?
No items found. Check out our Exhibitions Page?
No items found. Check out our Exhibitions Page?
No items found. Check out our Exhibitions Page?