MYTH MAKERS — SPECTROSYNTHESIS III

Myth Makers After Hours

MYTH MAKERS — SPECTROSYNTHESIS III

Family Day at Tai Kwun Contemporary

Myth Makers After Hours

Art After Hours: Myth Makers—Performances by Bones Tan Jones and Joshua Serafin

Tai Kwun Conversations: Spill the Tea and Werq! Truth & Performance in Hong Kong Drag Culture

Myth Makers—Spectrosynthesis III: Teacher's Morning & Teacher’s Workshop

Tai Kwun Conversations: Exhibition(ism) and Social Change

Date & Time

11 Feb - 1 Apr, 2023 Please refer to programme timetable

Location

2/F JC Contemporary

Price

Exclusive to Tai Kwun Fan, Free of charge

General

An intimate and informal series of chats over four Saturdays, Myth Makers After Hours offers the audience new ways of learning about art and its connections to the world.

Presented in collaboration with Dr. Sonia Wong, Corrupt the Youth, and eleven guest speakers, Myth Makers After Hours not only broaches queer themes and artistic practices encountered in the exhibition Myth Makers—Spectrosynthesis III but also brings in and delves into topics ranging from history, literature, philosophy, to nightlife and various other subcultures. The audience will get the chance to listen to a fascinating spectrum of speakers working in art, fashion, photography, dance, literature, as well as academia who will chat, joke, and digress on a broad range of matter. Hopefully the audience will experience an unfolding of the past and the possibilities of queerness as we invent our own fascinating new myths.

Date

Time

Partner

Speaker

Topic

11.02.2023 (Sat)

3:00pm–4:30pm 

Sonia Wong

Joseph Chen, Feicien Feng, Kary Kwok

Queer Creation & Underground Culture: Art, Party & Music

04.03.2023 (Sat)

3:00pm–4:30pm

Corrupt the Youth

Yeung Chun Yin, Li Hong Ting

The Inter-interpretation between Mythology and Gender

11.03.2023 (Sat)

3:00pm–5:00pm 

Sonia Wong

Kitty Hung, Samwai Lam, Joseph Lee, Nicholas Wong, Sonia Wong

Writing Queer Bodies and Sex & Reading Group

01.04.2023 (Sat)

3:00pm–4:30pm 

Sonia Wong

Sealing Cheng, Izumi Nakayama

Imagining Gender & New National Myths in Modern Asia

Venue: 2/F JC Contemporary

This event will be conducted in Cantonese and English, simultaneous interpretation into Cantonese or English, respectively.

The event will adhere to the latest health and safety regulations and enforce social distancing measures.


Partner

Sonia Wong

Based in Hong Kong, Sonia Wong currently teaches gender and culture-related subjects in the Gender Studies Programme of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include lesbian identity, female sexuality, film, and new media.

She is the founder of Reel Women Hong Kong, the first and only independent film festival in Hong Kong devoted to the promotion of films and artworks created by women, which also provides a platform for gender equality and raising social awareness. In 2018, she co-founded the Women’s Festival Hong Kong with Chantal Wong from Eaton HK and Vera Lui from Sally Coco. In addition to her work as a community organiser and advocate, she is also a writer and visual artist.

Corrupt the Youth

Corrupt the Youth is dedicated to promoting philosophy to the general public. We regularly discuss philosophy in different ways— from points of view both introductory and in-depth, ancient and contemporary, Eastern and Western. Within this space, everything can be doubted, reflected on, and interrogated. Our goal is to corrupt 'good' young people, getting them to think outside the box and showing them the world of philosophy.


Speakers Bio

Joseph Chen
Sealing Cheng
Feicien Feng
Kitty Hung
Kary Kwok
Samwai Lam
Li Hong Ting
Joseph Lee
Izumi Nakayama
Nicholas Wong
Yeung Chun Yin

Joseph Chen King Yuen is a Hong Kong-based art and cultural organiser and artist. Currently the director of culture at Eaton HK, he is the co-founder of the artist initiative Virtue Village. His curatorial and art practices, which revolve around the moving image, visual art, and performance, touch on technology, gender, sexuality, mythology, and subculture.

Sealing Cheng currently teaches in the Department of Anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Previously, she was associate professor of women’s and gender studies at Wellesley College in the US. Her research is focused on sexuality with reference to sex work, human trafficking, women’s activism, and policy making. Her book, On the Move for Love: Migrant Entertainers and the U.S. Military in South Korea (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010) received the Section on the Sociology of Sexualities’ Distinguished Book Award of the American Sociological Association in 2012.

Feicien Feng is a Nanjing-born, Taiwan-raised photographer now based in Hong Kong, whose multicultural background has allowed him to infuse uniquely Eastern elements into his photography. Through his academic study of filmmaking and photography, Feng reimagines gender and continuously explores its possibilities. The world through Feng’s lens is modern, compelling, and unexpected.

Kitty Hung Hiu Han is a poet and native of Hong Kong. A graduate of City University of Hong Kong’s Department of Cultural Studies, she was a member of the university’s Tolopoem society and student newspaper. She was previously an editor for Fleurs des Lettres and a young radio/television programme host. She is the recipient of several literary awards for her poetry and fiction. Currently an educator who teaches writing and a freelance writer, her work has appeared in various publications, including Ming Pao, Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine, Literature Hong Kong, and Initium Media. Since having her baby girl, Kitty has embarked on discovering a whole new world that integrates gender identity, land use, and early childhood education.

Hong Kong and London-based artist Kary Kwok travels between photography, installation, and fashion. Since receiving his master of arts degree in photography from the Royal College of Arts in London, his work has engaged with the perceptions and demands that normative society has placed on marginalised bodies and subjectivities. Associated with the Black Arts Movement, he has collaborated with a number of artists, including Sonia Boyce, Hiriam To, and Franko B. He was a prize winner in the 1994 Southbank Photo Show in London and the artist-in-residence at the Rupertinum in Museum der Moderne Salzburg, where he subsequently held a solo exhibition titled “I am not what I am”.

Samwai Lam earned her master and bachelor of arts degrees in comparative literature from the University of Hong Kong. Her novels include White Dirt (2016) and Moon Phase (2020). Lam’s art criticism, shortlisted for the International Awards for Art Criticism (IAAC), and her short stories, for which she received a literary award from the House of Hong Kong Literature, have appeared in City Magazine, Fleurs des Lettres, MING'S, and Esquire HK.

Li Hong Ting obtained his Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Design (Culture and Design) from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, he then obtained his MA in Philosophy, MPhil in Philosophy, and PhD in Philosophy from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. After graduation, Li has taught humanities courses in different tertiary institutions and is currently a lecturer at the College of Professional and Continuing Education, an affiliate of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Born in Hong Kong, Lee is a choreographer, performer, and performance curator. He graduated from The Place, London Contemporary Dance School with a master of arts degree in contemporary dance in 2015. The same year, Lee joined Unlock Dancing Plaza as a resident artist. Lee was appointed the associate artistic director of Unlock Dancing Plaza in 2020 and began his tenure there as artistic director in 2022, curating a series of contemporary dance programmes and platforms to foster artistic discourse in the local and international performing arts field. Lee co-founded the Hong Kong-based dramaturg group Performative Dimensions with Michael Li and Lawrence Lau in 2022.

Izumi Nakayama is research officer/fellow at the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, The University of Hong Kong. Her research interests, which focus on the body, gender, labour, and technology in modern and contemporary Japan and East Asia, examine various histories, including those of menstruation, menopause, and death. Through her teaching, she addresses topics such as new reproductive technologies, bioethics, and biohacking to explore the intersecting issues of food, time, emotions, and life itself.

Nicholas Wong is the author of Crevasse (Kaya Press, 2015), which won the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, and Besiege Me (Noemi Press, 2021). He is also a recipient of the Australian Book Review’s Peter Porter Poetry Prize. He has contributed writing to projects for the Manchester International Festival and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

Yeung Chun Yin, also known as “Uncle Salt”, is a graduate of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Hong Kong and the department of Philosophy in the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He later undertook a doctoral programme at Humboldt University, Berlin and Kings College, London. He currently teaches courses on philosophy and critical thinking. In 2016, Yin and his friends co-founded Corrupt the Youth, with the aim of getting more people to understand philosophy.