Interview: Fiona Lee Wing-shan 李穎姍 – Non-Mainstream Sonic Culture in China Amid COVID-19

Fiona Lee sitting in the Study Pod, blowing up balloons during her performance — Fiona Lee Wing-shan during her performance, sitting in the Study Pod, blowing up balloons, 25 June 2021.

For Situated Knowledge – Curating on the Move, a conference and workshop event (part of Shared Campus, led by Zürich University of the Arts (ZHdK) and Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) Academy of Visual Arts) that took place from the 25 to 27 June 2021, I invited Hong Kong-based sound artist Fiona Lee Wing-shan to perform in a study pod on the HKBU campus. Lee’s relationship to the public was complicated within this glazed, free-standing enclosure – she was cut off from the world and focused on her instruments; nevertheless extremely visible to the passing public as well as to the wider audience via the Shared Campus live-stream. As live-streaming has been a convenient way for artists to connect with their audiences under the COVID-19 restrictions, for this interview I asked Lee how the past year had affected her work.

Early COVID-19

Edward Sanderson (ES): Where were you when the COVID-19 situation started?

Fiona Lee (FL): I was in Hong Kong in February 2020. My last trip away from Hong Kong had been to join a festival hosted by Yuen Chi-wai in Singapore in December 2019. After that COVID-19 exploded and since then I have stayed in Hong Kong.

ES: When did the lockdowns start in Hong Kong? How did they affect you?

FL: I think the first lockdown was around the beginning of February 2020. Actually, for me, the lockdown only seriously affected me when the face mask regulation was introduced in July,¹ before that it was fine. I don’t believe in face masks, so it was very shocking for me when this law was passed.

Closures and Support

ES: Did all the performance venues shut immediately? How was that managed?

FL: From February to June they cancelled all the performances and events.² To begin with the organisers just tried to delay projects for one or two months, to see what would happen (although some may have been cancelled). At that point there were no support funds if you were involved in projects linked to the Hong Kong Government’s Leisure and Cultural Services Department (LCSD). But the Art Development Council (ADC) had a funding system for delayed projects. I actually had a project related to LCSD and to the West Kowloon Cultural District that was delayed, and I phoned ADC to ask if there were any kind of funds to help, but they said that it was not their project so they couldn’t help. Even with projects at Tai Kwun [arts centre], they could only help certain kinds of people with funds.

At the end of July 2020 there was a second lockdown as there had been a lot of confirmed cases in Hong Kong. So all the theatres and performance venues had to close down again. At that point ADC opened up their criteria of who they could support, including the arts practitioners who were affected and whose performances were cancelled or delayed during this period. I got around 20,000 HKD for that whole period, which is not bad.

ES: How did these lockdowns affect your scheduled projects?

FL: I was not affected too much when things were cancelled or delayed as I didn’t have a lot of performances planned before COVID-19. I had one major project at West Kowloon that began in February, and the performance was scheduled for April or May.³ This was with Alice Ma, the choreographer, doing some workshops, trying some things out where we explore our bodies. At the beginning of the year all the staff at West Kowloon had been planning so many projects, including bringing foreign artists to Hong Kong (like Ryuichi Sakamoto), and then all these things were cancelled. Because the local COVID-19 situation was changing all the time, the technical staff could not make many plans, and the artists also. We just tried our best to carry on with our research, but we didn’t know when things would reopen.

Once LCSD reopened some venues in late May, we were able to set a date to perform in June. Our project then became West Kowloon’s main project for the theatre and they got very excited about it – they had a lot of hope for this event and they wanted to make it really proper. I thought this was fine, because the theatre people want to get their energy back. Our project was originally not designed to be a very complicated theatre work or a complex production; it was meant to be a very experimental piece. When we were planning we thought it would not be for the general public, but just people we know, some dancers and some musicians. We were only going to present our piece in a small room that held fifty audience members, but with the social distancing regulations West Kowloon could only allow half those people to attend. So they thought this was too few people for it to be worthwhile and they moved us to a bigger theatre which held 600 audience. With the regulations 300 people would be allowed to enter, although finally they restricted the registrations to around 150 people and around 115 people came on the first day.

Ours was one of the first performances after opening up. The people in Hong Kong, the art practitioners, performer, or art lovers, they were very hungry for this event. They could finally gather together, see each other, and enjoy a performance.

Life

ES: So what were you doing while everything was shut down?

FL: I enjoyed my life! I was walking around my local city and observing people’s houses. I always pay attention to the people who are looking for face masks, and for toilet paper – I just observed. I stayed in my home area and walked about a lot of in my district, Tai Po. I enjoy that kind of feeling. In this period I didn’t make a lot of new stuff for my own practice, because I wanted to learn or experience something other than art, other than making. So I explored myself.

ES: Did you do any field recordings?

FL: Yes, but only occasionally. I explored food as well, the relationship between food and myself. I learned cooking and cooked a lot. My cooking is related to the philosophy of Chinese medicine. This is my recent learning.

ES: Cooking for your dog was part of this, is that right?

FL: Yes. She was born in my boyfriend’s home 14 years ago, and she got epilepsy 6 years ago. So I tried to be with her, take care of her, and get treatment for her from my homeopath. So it’s a very big learning period for myself. I have much more understanding about this now. My learning about homeopathy is about connecting to oneself, also with my dog, and then also to the social phenomena nowadays.

Taking a stand

FL: Related to this, I actually refused a very big job as a sound artist/art practitioner for people who have a neuro disabilities. It’s called i-dart project, an organization for hospitals. The activities were designed to explore different sensations, including sound and vision, to make a final theatre piece. But early in 2020 they cancelled all their art-related activities, and only maintained their normal treatments. But when they restarted the project in July 2020 they said that we have to have COVID-19 tests every time we go to the hospital. I refused to do this. I am just trying my best to protest this general demand I’m coming across a lot now, because I feel this kind of regulation is against human rights, and is just part of the monopoly of the medical establishment. So I am just trying my best. Tai Kwun are now also asking performers to all get tested as well, otherwise they do not allow them to perform on site, even if they wear masks. I think this demand is unreasonable.

For instance, I had a project that was due to take place at Tai Kwun’s F Hall in August 2020. I was the music composer for a production choreographed by Wong Pik Kei Rebecca. The performance itself could not happen but was changed into a documentary about our pre-production period.⁴ So half the money from Tai Kwun went towards this film. Then in April of this year we were able to make the performance. Because it happened finally we were able to get paid the other half of the money.

For this performance, the COVID-19 social distancing regulations meant the audience needed to be separated out. We had small sections of carpet on the floor for groups of two or four people to sit on, and also some chairs along the wall. Originally Rebecca wanted the audience to walk around the space as she was dancing between them, however the restrictions meant they could not move, they had to sit down on the floor.

There was quite a lot of stress for this production as Tai Kwun requested all people involved go for the COVID-19 tests. This actually gave me the strong idea that I should change my idea for the piece, and give the audience the opportunity to have their voice as part of it. There’s a sound loop with some texts which echo around the space with the sounds of the audience. The dance piece is about sexuality and also related to the political situation in Hong Kong, so I found some texts from various books on medical theory, the history of parenting, and sex. I found it very interesting that I could change the piece to incorporate my feelings and my perspective on COVID-19, the government and political things.

Live-streams

ES: Have you taken part in any live-streams since the beginning of last year?

FL: I joined the live-streams curated by Kung Chi-shing, organised by LCSD. All the shows were cancelled during that period but LCSD had already scheduled a festival called ReNewVision, so they changed it into an online version. The performance series is called E(ar)-Storm which was a series of pre-recorded performances by Vanissa Law, Alex Yiu, Jasper Fung, Nerve, and me followed by Kung interviewing each of us. The last online stream in this series was with all us performing together live.

forestlimit livestream

FL: Another online performance was an invitation from Japan, from the experimental musician Elico Suzuki.⁵ She got funding from the Japanese government for a live-stream performance between two venues, 20alpha in Hong Kong and forestlimit in Tokyo. We couldn’t jam together, but we had a certain kind of collaboration, in which the first set was by two of us in Hong Kong, and then the second set was from Japan, and the third set went back to Hong Kong – this way of performing.

Shared Campus HKBU AVA live-stream

Overhead view of Fiona Lee Wing-shan performing in the study pod for the Shared Campus live-stream, 25 June 2021

ES: For the live-stream performance I arranged with you that took place at Hong Kong Baptist University, how did the live-streaming aspect affect what you did?

FL: For me, it was about being there in that study pod, to feel the space and my relationship to the space. During the performance I was also thinking about my relationship to the social situation during that period, through the materials I prepared, the broadcasts I was receiving on my radio, the pre-recorded field recordings I used, and the vinyl records I was playing. I think it was good. One thing I did was to try my best to blow up all these balloons as part of the performance, but it was a little bit difficult as it took a lot of effort. I need to practice!

ES: How did you deal with the event being three hours long?

FL: I think it is the first time I have done such a long performance. I had to manage myself, as the internal pulse of the performance was much slower, I had to slow myself down. It was like taking a three-hour slow walk. Because it’s a long-durational event, of course the changes were very subtle. But I like this. If I was doing a shorter performance I would be much more deliberate about the changes and conscious of them. So I love to do a performance where they are not so obvious.