‘Parallel’ will screen as part of @acinemaspace screening series in May 🌷Thank you @janelle.vanderkelen and @thiro.suzuki for inviting us to be part of Program 3: an open hand gathers the wind. Honoured to have ‘Parallel’ be presented among these beautiful moving image works. Sharing the programme trailer - love the way a snippet from the film has been included here! 🥢
On Wednesday I shared a piece of writing exploring creativity in the Irish immigrant home at the “Irish Blood, English Hearth” symposium at Museum of the Home. Felt very lucky to be presenting with such an inspiring and varied programme of speakers, with topics ranging from reframing the Derry Boat as a site of home (Rachael Kelly Ryder) to rethinking Riverdance through the lens of virtuosity and Stage Irishness (Dr Aoife Monks). Such a fun and emotional day of storytelling!
Thanks to David Kelly, Sean Campbell from Anglia Ruskin University and the Centre for Studies of Home for inviting me to take part and to Danielle at Museum of the Home for coordinating such a beautiful day!
Beginning with anecdotal vignettes of the home I aimed to explore what creativity means through the mechanisms of Historicism versus phenomenological approaches to understanding art making.
@museumofthehome 💚
Having seen many images of the Hakka Tulou houses in Fujian, I had expected to be amazed by their scale and magnitude but what I hadn’t anticipated was the feeling of closeness and intimacy that filled the ‘walled villages’. Someone remarked that it felt like a version of student halls - observing and being observed, confined but also secure. Unlike student halls, the walls of the Tulou are exceptionally thick (1-3 metres) and the whole structure is designed to withstand fire, canon-fire and protect inhabits during long sieges, with space for food storage, internal wells and livestock.
The site in Fujian is a UNESCO world heritage site and many of the largest tulou are now tourist destinations. It was somewhat jarring to find stalls selling tulou-shaped ice-lollies in fluorescent pink and purple inside the houses but the tourism industry has been necessary to provide jobs and bring young people back to the area. Our guide had lived in the area all his life and we were lucky to be invited to visit the tulou his friends lived in. These smaller-scale structures were similar to the ones my family inhabited before relocating to Hong Kong. In these living tulou, it was the softer sounds and feeling of calmness that struck me. People were busy: sweeping, chatting, washing vegetables, plucking chickens ahead of the new year, but the central open area of the tulou demanded stillness and provided spaciousness.
Many of the Hakka community that moved to Hong Kong settled in the New Territories, often still using the template of the square house with inner open-air courtyard and walled village system. Since the 1960s, when many of the villagers (including my family) moved to the UK, the Hakka villages of the New Territories have been largely abandoned, now often known as ‘ghost villages’. In HK there are efforts to preserve and revitalise the villages, but the remote locations and land restrictions can make the prospect of moving back less appealing. @jessielauwrites has a brilliant piece of writing about this, check out her website to read about ‘The Ghost Villages’.
Excited to be supporting @sianfan as a researcher and producer during the research phase of her fellowship with @designtrust and @vam_east . Over the next few months we will be exploring Hakka culture and heritage, with field research in Hong Kong and Guangdong - as well as tracing our shared Hakka lineage (from Guangdong to Hong Kong to Essex).
Pictured is a liangmao 涼帽 (‘cool hat’), from the @vamuseum collection. The literal translation of Hakka 客家 is ‘guest people/families’.
Thanks already to @wukarlie@chunyinrainbowchan@elainebeings for sharing stories, references and translations, look forward to more conversations!
2. Suk Ran-hi
3, 4, 5, 6. Mary Heilmann: Starry Night (1967-71) Dia Beacon
8, 9, 10. Yoichirō Hirase, Shell Motifs (Kaigara dammen zuan)
11, 12. Poems in Stone Fruit by Rebecca Perry
