Harsh Light: Youngsook Choi, Jessie Jing & Monica Tolia
Wednesday 13 October, 7 – 8:30pm
Online (via Zoom)
Free & open to all
Click to view a recording of the conversation on our YouTube channel
We have a new Harsh Light webinar for October 2021 — our tenth!
A conversational space for practitioners and publics alike, the webinars serve a number of important functions during a particularly difficult year: for critique and restoration, for ‘going public’ with the ways we work as an organisation.
In each session, we invite two or more speakers to talk about their practice in relation to arts funding structures like Arts Council England (ACE) and the interrelated crises of health, environment and social discontent.
Bloc Projects wants to keep growing this platform as a place for regular reflection on the state of the art worlds around the UK and how we shape and understand them in such uncertain times. Rather than the weekly sessions of 2020, Harsh Light is now happening every month or two. We hope that this will give each webinar the room to breathe and be more closely considered. The webinars will continue to question the ways in which the three ACE outcomes (creative people; cultural communities; creative & cultural country) and four investment principles (inclusivity and relevance, ambition and quality, dynamism, and environmental responsibility) affect our practices, as well as how we situate our work and lives in the complicated contexts of ‘now’.
Documentation image from Have you eaten yet?
For this Harsh Light, we’ve invited artists Youngsook Choi, Jessie Jing and Monica Tolia to talk us through their project Have you eaten yet? (HYEY) and what it means to take up ‘affectionate space’. Looking at (mis)identities, rituals and acts of care through the prism of East Asian diaspora, HYEY took place over a number of events and performances in July 2021. What learning has come of this? In the throes of Covid, how does taking up ‘affectionate space’ help practitioners of East Asian heritage rethink well-intentioned but vague arts sector terms like ‘inclusivity’ and ‘relevance’?
Youngsook is a London-based artist and researcher with a PhD in human geography. Her practice relates to the subjective position as a woman, mother, and migrant of Korean Heritage, coming from a working-class background. Youngsook’s recent performances explore the concept of 'political spirituality and intimate aesthetics of community actions through composing speculative narratives with research evidence, folk tales, mythologies and performative instructions for audience participation. Youngsook is the recipient of Arts Council England Project Grant for the collective healing project for Asian diaspora, Becoming Forest.
Jessie is a Malaysian-Chinese dance artist, choreographer and writer based in London. She is a Leverhulme Arts scholar (2019-21) in MFA Choreography, with her research centred around the constructs of memory and space through dance and poetic narratives. She was also one of the artists for March Art House’s 2020 virtual exhibition, We Are Womxn. Jessie had, to date, performed across Europe, Hong Kong and China, and South-East Asia for various artistic, commercial and corporate projects. She is on the associate dancer’s programme of Watkins Dance Company, associate partner of theArtists, and dance artist in the Ranbu Collective. Jessie is also author of Manuscripts of the Mind.
Monica is an Asian American and neurodivergent artist, based in London. Her projects are multidisciplinary, traversing performance, installation, dance, technology, costume-making, video & sound. Through collaboration, she creates sensory installations and performances embodying ethics of collective care and healing, informed by marginalised lived experiences and desire for creating spaces of community within the human & more-than-human world. Recent commissions and awards include Deptford X Festival 2021, Trinity Laban Ignite Award (2021), Deptford X Residency ‘how to be together again’ (2020), ACE National Lottery Projects Grant in 2019 for ‘Future Present’, and Art Night 2019.
Bloc Projects is proud to maintain a public programme that is free for everyone. However, attendees are encouraged to donate to the S2 Foodbank, who are carrying out essential work during this time. To donate either follow the link on our homepage or click the button below.
This programme of events has been generously supported by Arts Council England