We are living in a world with division, categorization and borders which are constructed strongly on the basis of power, authority, and violence. How can one say the beautiful words like everyone means everyone and public means public in a world where the values of humanity are at risk? Everyone has never been meant to be everyone, and public has never been an absolute public. In this case, we see social space is constructed with hierarchy, racism, alienation, discrimination, and classes under ideologies and even language itself. If we are to look for a future of our world, Chong would like to suggest (is doing) various exercises in the form of performance to give a rehearsal of the future with changes instead of joining the celebration of the ideologies and norms.
“The Collective Individual Exercises” is a series of performances dealing with the concept of collectivism and individualism, personal and public. Chong aims to work with numerous people from different backgrounds for doing performance and to explore what we can share in performance in terms of solidarity. The series of performance consist of several choreographies.
"One Sound of the Futures" is a performance involving people from Hong Kong, South Korea and Wuhan in China. Standing like living sculptures, the participants were asked to simultaneously formulate the sound of the futures from Kai Tak Runway Park in Hong Kong, Democracy Square in Gwangju and from K11 Artist Village in Wuhan. Lined up in a stringent formation they expressed how they imagined their own and personal future. By mixing all these different voices of the futures, diverse times interwove to become a unique moment when the time that has not yet come is addressed. This ultimate, intangible time resounded in a spoken yet indefinable noise created by hundreds of individual voices heard from different cities and countries. The Tallinn version of “One Sound of the Futures” will be executed on Freedom Square.
ISAAC CHONG WAI is a Berlin-based artist from Hong Kong, with an MFA in Public Art and New Artistic Strategies from the Bauhaus-Universität in Weimar, Germany, and a BA in Visual Arts from the Academy of Visual Arts at the Hong Kong Baptist University. His work has been shown at M+ Museum and Para Site in Hong Kong in 2018; Stiftung Brandenburger Tor and Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin in 2017; Deutsche Künstlerbund, Berlin and Gwangju Media Art Festival in 2016; Kunstfest Weimar and Macura Museum in Novi Banovic and the Moscow International Biennale for Young Art in Museum of Moscow in 2014. He had solo exhibitions at Kunstraum München in Munich, 2018, Goethe Institut Hongkong in Hong Kong, 2018, Bauhaus Museum in Weimar, 2016. His works across a range of media, including live performance, video, photography, and site-specific installation, and considers the interplay between the collective and the individual, the politics of time and space, and real and imagined futures. His works often engage with other performers, with whom Chong performs, to allow for further interrogation of notions of the social and unified body.
Chong was selected for the Scholarship Künstlerhaus Lukas in 2018. He is one of the participating artists at Urban Heat, a four-year project by the Festivals in Transition Network, supported by Creative Europe from 2015 to 2018. He received first runner-up of the Hong Kong Human Rights Art Prize in 2017. He was awarded the Burger Collection “Artist Scholarship Program” in 2016, and the Bauhaus Essentials Award in 2015 and 2014. He was awarded the first runner-up prize for the Hong Kong Contemporary Art Award and the Professor Eva Man Best Honours Project Award in 2012. His works are collected by Burger Collection.
https://www.isaacchongwai.com
Freiraum is an initiative of Goethe Institute and Kanuti Gildi SAAL will organise a series of events related to the topic of freedom in Tallinn. Freiraum as sphere of freedom or free zone unites 53 partners from culture, science and civil society all over Europe who in more than 40 cities of Europe will be grappling with the concept of freedom in our contemporary world. Paired European cities are developing projects to be presented to the public in a series of events in 2018 and 2019. Kanuti Gildi SAAL dialogue partner is Kunsthaus Dresden and they formulated question - against the backdrop of the increasing use of the city and public space as a setting for right-wing populist initiatives since late 2014, what can art, as a language of freedom, do in times of widespread resentment? Kanuti Gildi SAAL posed a question: are we wrong to be happy? Focusing on the nexus between freedom and responsibility as well as on positive aspects of free private and public life.
www.goethe.de/prj/fre/en/index.html