Art After Hours 2019

Art After Hours: “Come to me, Paradise” Film Screening and Conversation with Artist Stephanie Comilang

Poetry Reading with Tammy Lai-Ming Ho and Eddie Tay

Film Screening & Kukangendai Music Performance

One ear to hear - on(h)(e)ar)

Elvia Wilk’s Oval and Real Eco-Estate Futures: reading followed by conversation with Tiffany Sia

Foxconn Frequency (no.3) – for three visibly Chinese performers

Spitting Spirits: from hip hop to acoustic sound with MC Yan

Under-Cover: Investigations in Art Publishing

The Great Spirit: acoustic performance by MC Yan

Under-Cover: Investigations in Art Publishing – Spotlight

Incoming Outgoing No. 1: spontaneous rituals with Shane Aspegren and Suitcase Institute

Screening and Talk | Chungking Global

Merry Night Ride: performance by Merry Lamb Lamb

Real Estate Zine Bedroom Story: launch with Popo-Post Art Group

Translator as viewer as performer: re-translating conceptual art with Yan Wu

Richard Roe: reading by Tyler Coburn

Cross and Transfer: Bookmaking Workshop with Doreen Chan

ART AFTER HOURS - Disaster and Japanese Art: Noi Sawaragi Lecture

Art After Hours: Mauvais Sang Screening + Li Chi Tak in Conversation

Art After Hours: Sarah Morris: No Inside Outside (ASAP Keynote Lecture)

Art After Hours: Screening and Talk | Rehearsing the Museum

"Yesterday Once More" Film Premiere and Talk

Yuk Hui: Book Launch

Art After Hours: Influenzers 你我相隔(多麼遠) Performative Workshop with Enoch Cheng and curator talk with Ying Kwok

Bitten: Inside the Mosquito World

Screening of “Prison Architect” by Cao Fei with the artist present and followed by a Q&A session

Art After Hours: Influenzers 你我相隔 (多麼遠) Performative Workshop with Enoch Cheng

Art After Hours: “Come to me, Paradise” Film Screening and Conversation with Artist Stephanie Comilang

Travelling Book: “14 Years Old & World & Border” Book Launch & Reading Event

Art After Hours: “The Witching Hour” Panel

Art After Hours: The Violence of Gender (From a Hong Kong perspective) Panel

[Art After Hours] Artist’s Choice: ”Night of the Living Dead“ and in Conversation with Angela Su

Art After Hours: Zhong Kui and the Reform of Hell—A Puppet Show by eteam

Art After Hours: Karaoke Court by Jack Tan

Art After Hours: Contagion and Hygiene panel

Art After Hours: Hong Kong Visions with Contemporary Musiking Hong Kong

Art After Hours: The Great Every Pandiculate Dinner Party

Date & Time

15 Mar 2019 7pm-8:30pm

Location

Laundry Steps

Price

Free of charge

General

A “science fiction documentary” made with Filipino workers in Hong Kong.

“Lumapit Sa Akin, Paraiso” (“Come to Me, Paradise”) (2016) is a “science fiction documentary” directed by artist Stephanie Comilang that was made in collaboration with and featuring Filipina migrant workers who work in Hong Kong. Workers Irish May Salinas, Lyra Ancheta Torbela, and Romylyn Presto Sampaga occupy the spaces in Central, Hong Kong usually designated for finance and banking, turning them to spaces of comfort where they relax over food, drinks, manicures, prayer, and dance. The film is narrated from the perspective of Paraiso, a "ghost”played by a “drone” who speaks of the isolation from being uprooted and thrown into a new place. Paraiso’s reprieve comes when she is finally able to interact with the women and feel her purpose, which is to transmit their vlogs, photos, and messages back home. Only when the women gather en masse is the signal strong enough to summon Paraiso to them for download. The voice of Paradise the drone is voiced by Comilang’s mother Emily, who migrated to Canada in the 1970s. During the week she is forced back into isolation and is left in an existential rut.

“Lumapit Sa Akin, Paraiso” uses Hong Kong’s dystopian maze-like structures that the Filipina migrants re-imagine, and focuses on the beauty of care-giving but also explores how technology is used as a pivotal way for the women to connect — to each other but also to loved ones. Raising questions around modern isolation, economic migration and the role of public space in both urban and digital forms, the film transcends its various component parts to offer a startling commentary on the present, from the point of view of the future.

Following the screening will be a conversation with the director Stephanie Comilang.

The conversation will be conducted in English with simultaneous interpretation to Cantonese available.

 


Stephanie Comilang is a Filipina-Canadian artist based in Toronto and Berlin. Her documentary-based works create narratives that reexamine notions of mobility and the migratory paths of labour on a global scale. Her work has been shown at Artspeak (Vancouver), Images Festival (Toronto), Ghost: 2561 (Bangkok), Asia Art Archive in America (New York), SALTS (Basel), and UCLA (Los Angeles).