The artist Choy Ka Fai explores “supernatural dance experiences” based on encounters with shamans.
The Supernatural Dance Explorer is a performance lecture by Berlin artist Choy Ka Fai exploring shamanic dance culture in Asia. In search of the supernatural dance experience, he has filmed extraordinary shamanic rituals and folk traditions that are still prevalent in our contemporary times, intersecting with the broader environmental, technological and political shifts in Asia. The lecture will detail a selection of case studies from his encounters and collaboration process, interweaving with shamanic practices observed in Singapore, Indonesia, Siberia, Taiwan and Vietnam.
This lecture will take place live and online, both projected into the cinema and
accessible via CCA Annex.
You can book a ticket for a place in the cinema, or register online for a reminder.
Biography
Choy Ka Fai is a Berlin-based Singaporean artist. His multidisciplinary art practice situates itself at the intersection of dance, media art and performance. Through research expeditions, pseudo-scientific experiments and documentary performances, Ka Fai appropriates technologies and narratives to imagine new futures of the human body. In 2019, Ka Fai started working on the CosmicWander series exploring shamanic dance culture in Asia. CosmicWander produced a collection of performances, exhibitions and VR works. It premiered in 2021 with a solo exhibition at the Singapore Art Museum, followed by a VR experience Blue Sky Academy at Tanzhas nrw dussendolf. In Berlin, the performances of Postcolonial Spirits premiered at Tanz Im August Festival in 2021 and Yishun Is Burning was presented at Tanzplattform Deutschland in 2022. Ka Fai’s projects have been presented in major institutions worldwide, including Sadler’s Wells (London), ImPulsTanz Festival (Vienna) and Kyoto Experiment (Japan). He was the resident artist at tanzhaus nrw in Düsseldorf (2017–2019) and Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin (2014-15). Ka Fai graduated with a M.A. in Design Interaction from the Royal College of Art, London, United Kingdom.
This event is part of the live programme for life-bestowing cadaverous soooooooooooooooooooot a research exhibition collated by Rae-Yen Song 宋瑞渊.
