Category Archives: artist

Phone Tag: Interview with Olivia Koh

Posted on by

Olivia Koh, His heart was stuffed with dead wings (‘Suicide’, After Lorca, Jack Spicer), 2018. Image credit: Aaron Christopher Rees

I speak with Melbourne-based artist Olivia Koh in this Phone Tag interview. Olivia takes poetry and historical colonial texts as a jumping off point for a reconsideration of their context, biases, and contemporary relevance, often using video as a medium. We discuss her recent projects as well as the alternative exhibition space she organizes and the economy of living as an artist in Melbourne, Australia.

 

Phone Tag is a generative interview format, where I ask each participating artist five questions (plus others as the discussion meanders). At the end, I ask him or her to introduce me to an artist whose attitude and work they find interesting and/or inspiring, who I then interview with the same five questions.

*****

Linnea West: How do you know [former Phone Tag participant] Athena Thebus?

Olivia Koh: I met Athena through a friend in Melbourne. I think she’s a very generous person. She lent me her drone… I saw one of her works at a festival here. Maybe we’ll get to this in a minute, but I host a video website, which is an online database to host videos online called recess. We asked Athena to contribute to that next year. I’m looking forward—I know she does texts and installations and performances, but she makes videos as well.

LW: When you say you host, is that like being a curator?

OK: I’m not sure about the title for myself. Organizer? Because I’m basically an artist, so I don’t have that curatorial training. I work with two other artists from Melbourne, Kate Meakin and Nina Gilbert, and we facilitate putting works online that are film works or video works. I don’t know if you’ve spoken to people in Melbourne, but there’s a particular economy here around exhibiting. It can be expensive and quite competitive.

LW: So, the site is an alternative exhibition space?

OK: Yes, exactly. More simply, it’s an alternative exhibition space that’s accessible through the internet. We get writers or artists to both collaborate with the artist and to produce a text that sits alongside the video. If artists want to, they can leave their work on the site and then people can still access it after the exhibition.

It has been going for two years, so it’s just starting. There’s a lot to navigate. We’re trying to get some money for it, because now it is reliant on artists working for free, on us working for free. We’d love to change that, but at the same time, I think it’s good to make something of what you have.

LW: Totally. Is the format because of a particular interest in video or because of the economy of it?

OK: A bit of both for myself. Nina, Kate and I, we studied photography at the same art school, the VCA in Melbourne, at different times. We do have an interest in photography, and we’re bringing works with an interest in that medium, or thinking about how to navigate that in the contemporary moment…

How do you navigate having a video in a gallery? There weren’t many diverse approaches to doing that in galleries in Melbourne. Also, people are working so much, and they have works but they don’t always show them as a final product, so it was making space to show those. It sounds altruistic, but it’s been really great to see them—that’s a privilege as well.

Olivia Koh, Episodes, 2018. Image credit: Aaron Christopher Rees

LW: To back up a little bit, why did you need to borrow a drone from Athena?

OK: [laughs] I saw one of Athena’s works, Deep Water Dream Girl, and there was this amazing footage that she took in the Philippines. It was a video following her family and a certain island where they live. I was watching the video, and I thought I really would love to capture certain shots by air. I also went to the Philippines, and I’ve made a sculpture that I’ve been putting in the sea. I’ve been trying to film it by drone. That’s what I’ve been using it for, not that effectively…but practicing. 

LW: If you have to describe your practice in a couple of sentences, what do you say you make?

OK: I rewrite texts, found texts, and I collage them or sort of…go through what is there, whether it’s using video, or making text pieces as images or as sculptures. For example, I’ve looked at anthropological texts from the 1900s that were written about people in the Philippines, and I’ve looked at some that are about people in Australia at that time. In the past, they have definitely been social, like describing burial practices and mourning practices. There was a focus on a dead body or a body that can’t move or speak for itself.

Olivia Koh, Episodes, 2018. Image credit: Aaron Christopher Rees

LW: What are you working on now?

OK: I’ve been looking at poetry and looking at translated poems in the works of a California poet, Jack Spicer. He translated [Frederico] García Lorca, the Spanish poet. I had the idea to get some of those lines translated by a Filipina artist, Dennese Victoria. I’m using this text in a video called Episodes. I did a residency in Manila in 2017 and I’m producing a work from my time there. I’m trying to relate my experience as a tourist to certain texts about colonial “hygiene bureaucrats” that came to Manila from America in the early 1900s. In a text about colonial pathologies, a doctor and academic named Warwick Anderson talks about tropical neurasthenia—medical conditions that are basically nervous breakdowns, from colonizing guilt and the change felt traveling in a foreign environment. When I was in the Philippines, I was complaining so much about the weather, and I was really overwhelmed. I was also trying to study this particular history and thinking: “Oh no, have I got this?”

[laughter]

I’m trying to make the correlation between footage I’ve shot there and to the different layers of history written about the country.

LW: Who has influenced your practice?

OK: Locally, I’ve been influenced by a few friends who are great artists. One’s Rosie Isaac, who writes and makes performances. Lauren Burrow, who is an artist—a sculptor. I’ve been influenced by them in a day-to-day way. Also, being exposed to the processes of their work has been a really practical way of learning.

I read a lot. I like poetry. Other texts influence my work more than art… art isn’t my primary go-to. I’ve also been reading this book by Patty Chang called The Wandering Lake. It accumulates parts of an exhibition and a research trip to a migrating body of water in China. It’s about her searching to make the work, but also about having her own body in that landscape. I really loved that.

LW: Her work is narrative, and you’re working with text, which are already narrative. Do you think about that in your work? Are you trying to deconstruct the narrative, or are you trying to create a new thread?

OK: Sometimes I’m trying to create a new narrative, and sometimes to sit the narrative on top of an existing work, re-addressing preexisting texts from another perspective. Inserting myself into the narrative is a way of making myself responsible for what I’m making, as well, which I feel uncomfortable with—but it’s good to put myself in there. I’m trying to put myself more in there, to become more visible in my work. At the moment I’m trying to make a slightly more narrative video, with me as a “germologist”—a kind of 1900s hygiene bureaucrat—having a delirious experience and then going into a dream state, with texts and images and memory converging.

Olivia Koh, Ginebra San Miguel, 2018. Image credit: Aaron Christopher Rees

LW: Is this one of your first forays into performance?

OK: Yeah. Usually, I’m quite removed from it. I use my body to film, and I use a lot of handheld shots. I think that’s what makes my work less objective or removed than traditional films, like the body—my body—is in the film. It’s not professional cinema; it’s more haphazard. But I haven’t really been in front of the camera. I’ve just been behind it.

LW: That’s a big shift.

OK: Yeah, I’ll probably go back behind it. I like the way that performance can be—this is probably the wrong word—but integrated into an artwork in different mediums, like a performative sculpture, that kind of thing.

LW: When did you first think of yourself as an artist?

OK: I find that hard, actually. After I finished studying and I graduated as an artist, I started calling myself an artist. I really think it’s not about study though. Ideally, it’s about identification. Like, if you want to call yourself an artist, you’re an artist. Here it’s difficult to have it as a career—as in other places, I’m sure. Because a lot of people aren’t going to make a living off being an artist, it’s about having that dedication if you want to make work instead of doing other things.

LW: Is it important for an artist to be in a big city? Whether that is in Melbourne or a city like New York, or wherever. Or, is it better to be in a small place where maybe life’s a little easier, rent’s a little cheaper, and there can be more of a focus on making?

OK: I’ve only been here practicing a few years, so I haven’t had a diverse experience… I’m really not sure what it’s like in New York. I think it depends on whereabouts you are, what your relationship is with a city, if a focus of yours is exhibiting, or whether it is to be present for shows and stuff that happen in the city, or what you community is. It’s all about how you talk with other artists.

LW: Do you have a good community in Melbourne?

OK: Yeah, there are lots of talented people that I can talk to.

I would also like to experience art communities elsewhere. When I went to Manila, I really enjoyed meeting different groups of artists and filmmakers. They really supported each other in the way that they worked on each other’s projects. I thought that was really cool. They really knew each other’s work through making it, producing it. Also, they were there for each other to talk about the work or to see the work.

Olivia Koh, The blue tongue of the coastline (Ode for Walt Whitman, After Lorca, Jack Spicer), 2018. Image credit: Aaron Christopher Rees

LW: What does an ideal day look like in the studio?

OK: I don’t think I’m particularly productive as a studio artist, so I’m probably not the best person to answer that.

LW: If not in the studio, an ideal day working?

OK: It’s when thoughts accumulate over a period of time. When I have those days when things are starting to make sense. That’s ideal. There’s so much time spent that is so frustrating, when I feel like I’m working but nothing is happening and the choices I make aren’t developing.

LW: The nature of your projects seem like they would take a long time.

OK: Yeah, relatively. This video work has taken me a year, but it grew from work over the past three or four years. I’ve framed the video in different ways and then have been making different versions. I’m very piecemeal with making works. It’s hard to really finish a work.

LW: How do you know when it’s done?

OK: I’d say, “Never.” I like to think of works as iterations. That’s the best way for myself. With all the work, because they’re not really serial pieces, they really change with the context…where it’s shown, when it’s shown.

LW: Those were all my questions. Thank you so much.

OK: Thanks, it was really nice to talk with you.

Phone Tag: Interview with Athena Thebus

Posted on by

Dreaming About You Woke Me Up, 2018. Presented at ACE Open, ADL. Photo: Sam Roberts

Previous Phone Tag participant Eugene Choi connected me with Athena Thebus for this Phone Tag interview. Athena is an artist based in Sidney who works at the intersection of sculpture and installation. Writing is both a driver and presence in work that navigates ideas of self and emotionally laden concepts such as shame. In this Phone Tag interview, we discuss how obsessions with words informs her practice, the importance of finding a queer community, and how she came to define herself as an artist.

 

Phone Tag is a generative interview format, where I ask each participating artist five questions (plus others as the discussion meanders). At the end, I ask him or her to introduce me to an artist whose attitude and work they find interesting and/or inspiring, who I then interview with the same five questions.

*****

 

Linnea West:  “If you were to briefly describe your practice, to someone who doesn’t know you, what do you say you make?”

Athena Thebus:  “I make sculpture and installations. I used to write a little. Well, recently it’s been a real combination of the two. I’ve been writing, and then wanting to make atmospheres or objects or installations that almost create a room for the writing, so they go hand in hand.”

LW:  “So, the text is very much in the gallery and an essential part of it?”

AT:  “Sometimes it’s not in the gallery. I’m like, ‘What part of this text do I want to make into a room or a mood?’ That’s where it begins. It might meander someplace else, but that’s the starting point.”

LW:  “Do the texts ever live by themselves as well? Do you ever publish them?”

AT:  “I do, but not many.”

[laughter]

“In my practice I do have a lot of text, in words or phrases that appear in my installations…I guess it is pretty text heavy. It just needs to breakdown and fragment as it goes along.”

Dreaming About You Woke Me Up [Detail: Power Fuck], 2018. Presented at ACE Open, ADL. Photo: Sam Roberts

LW:  “For me, as a writer, one of the things I love about writing about art is that writing pushes my thinking forward. How does the writing practice affect your thinking or your visual practice?”

AT:  “It feels like it becomes clearer. Also, I get stuck on words. Not stuck, but obsessed by words or certain phrases. Especially phrases that come from my mom that I thought that I had forgotten. For example, the other day I was thinking about desire and how much it’s a driving force in a lot of the things that I do. I remember when I was eight, I had one of those things that you have in your room that’s half a whiteboard, half a corkboard. She had written in permanent marker on the whiteboard side: ‘Desire + Determination = Success.’ It’s so full on. You know what I mean…I covered it up with pictures of my friend from school.”

LW:  “Yes.” [laughs]

AT:  “We have different ideas of what it means to be successful, but what is distilled in me from that quote of hers is definitely the desire.”

LW:  “That’s fantastic. I think that is so intense though.”

AT:  “Yeah. Permanent marker as well. I could never wipe it off.”

LW:  “What are you working on now?”

AT:  “I just had a really busy month. So I’m taking some time to rest, but I do have projects coming up. [Previous Phone Tag participant] Eugene [Choi] actually did this Real Real streaming thing with Campelltown Arts Center. I’m about to do that next.

It’s coming up in six weeks. It’s a live stream event. Before the stream you get a two‑week residency in the space. I’m doing it with Akil Ahamat and Ainslie Templeton. It should be good.

After that, a few other things. I’m not sure yet….I’ve got to move studios and all this kind of stuff. Some projects that I’ve been thinking about, and something to do with that quote, because it’s really been bugging me now.”

LW:  “Do you often work with other people?”

AT:  “It’s pretty fresh actually. One of my first real collaborations was with Marcus Whale. He’s a musician. For our first collaboration, I made the set and did his costume for a performance at a festival. It’s still fresh, but I like it. Usually I’m solo.”

LW:  “Do you have more performative aspects to your own practice?”

AT:  “I don’t like performing that much, but I love watching dance and I love watching performances. It’s just so energizing. Sometimes I feel that parts of my work lack this kind of performative aspect, like the rooms really need to have bodies moving in them. So I’m taking a little detour and just making rooms and costumes for performers that already exist in the world. Instead of bringing them into my space, I’m going to their space.”

LW:  “That’s interesting. And who knows, maybe in the end, it somehow does work back into your space.”

AT:  “Yeah. It’s exciting. I just love being able to do something and then hang back and not be involved.”

[laughs]

Deep Water Dream Girl [Still], 2018. Presented at Next Wave Festival. Image courtesy Athena Thebus

LW:   “So you mentioned that you’re moving studios. What’s an ideal day like in a studio?”

AT:  “Oooh an ideal day. The ideal day is that I wake up early and I go to yoga and that’s very rare. And then, I’ll ideally ride my bike to the studio, and when I get there, I read a bit. Then I make something and it makes me feel powerful and strong. That gets wrapped up within 6 hours because I think 6 hours is the most productive amount of time and then I ride home, and then I make dinner.”

LW:  “Does this have to be making something physical to get that feeling?”

AT:  “No, not necessarily. It could be some good words or it could just…yeah, it doesn’t have to be something physical. It’s a productive thinking time.”

LW:  “That makes sense. But you are also making objects, right?”

AT:  “Yeah…there’s never been the most ideal studio space. A lot of my installations are components that come together only in the week of install. I would so love to have a practice where that’s not the case, where everything’s figured out before install. It’s just hard to have all that time and all that space. Maybe that’s just how I work as well—everything’s fragmented. I can only think in fragments and then it comes together later.”

LW:  “If you work with fragments and assembling them in space, does that mean that the set up is provisional and that it could be reinstalled in a different way, or that different parts that could be reused?”

AT:  “Absolutely. I recently reinstalled this exhibition called Dreaming About You Woke Me Up. I’m so much more into the second iteration than the first, which is to be expected. I’m honestly interested in that kind of restructuring, re‑presenting something that’s essentially the same idea but different. I’m also trying to resist making something new all the time.”

LW:  “You don’t want to make something new all the time because the ideas are rich enough that you want to keep going back to them?”

AT:  “Yeah. Also, I feel like there’s this pressure to continually make something new. I don’t think it gives that idea enough length to be felt fully.”

First Thursday’s Filipinx Edition, in collaboration with Caroline Garcia, 2017. Presented at the Institute of Modern Art, QLD. Photo: Savannah van der Niet

LW:  “When did you first think of yourself as an artist?”

AT:  “It would have to be when I moved to L.A. in 2014. I had dreamt of the place before ever setting foot in America. I remember I was just like, ‘Whoa, I have to introduce myself to all these new people that don’t know who I am.’ I kept introducing myself as someone who was trying to be an artist. I realized that’s a fucked thing to say.”

LW:  “Yup.”

AT:  “Drop the trying to be and conceptualize myself as an artist. That’s when it first started.”

LW:  “That makes sense. How’d you like L.A.?”

AT:  “I loved it. It’s so sunny and warm there. It’s also the first place that I ever imagined a future for myself in a queer community. It’s a really critical moment in my life. Maybe that’s why I hold on to it as the best place ever.”

LW:  “Do you think that moving away had a lot to do with having that moment in your life?”

AT:   “Sure. I grew up in Brisbane, which is a much smaller city than Sydney.”

LW:  “You’ve been living in Sydney since L.A.?”

AT:  “Yeah, since 2015. I only got to be in L.A. for a year. I’ve been trying to come back. Every year I enter the Green Card Lottery.”

DOGGY (performance reading), 2017, performed at First Thursday’s Filipinx Edition, Institute of Modern Art, QLD. Photo: Savannah van der Niet

LW:  “One of the questions that I like to ask artists is: Do you think it’s more important to be in a big city or a quieter place? A big city is often great for a career, and you can see a lot of art. It’s also usually tough financially. From what I hear, Sydney is an expensive place to live. Or is it better to be somewhere smaller, where you can focus on making?”

AT:  “That is such a tough question, but I will say it’s better to be in a big city. I would never move back to Brisbane, for example. I never could go back to a small city. Definitely big city. Bigger ideas, more people. It’s just so much more exciting. It feels dense.”

LW:  “Everyone I talk to has either been in a big city or, maybe in an MFA program that was in a small town, so they were away but usually in a city. Nobody says, ‘Oh, you should be in a big city.’ Everyone says, ‘Oh, it’s a tough question. I want both,’ etc. You’re my first person who was just like, ‘No, you should just be in a city.’

AT:  “Yes, absolutely. That’s funny.”

DOGGY (performance reading), 2017, performed at First Thursday’s Filipinx Edition, Institute of Modern Art, QLD. Photo: Savannah van der Niet

LW:  “Who has influenced your practice?”

AT:  “So many people. Definitely AL Steiner. Who else? José Esteban Muñoz, definitely. I think also Bhenji Ra and Justin Shoulder, even though they’re very much more performance artists, because of their approach to culture, the Filipino culture, from an Australian point of view. Not even an Australian point of view. That’s an incorrect thing to say. Having a mixed heritage and living in Australia, and trying to negotiate all of that, has been a huge influence in my career.”

LW:  “How did you find your people? Was it in art school, or just going to see things?”

AT:  “Not art school. It was just going to things. Justin and Bhenji are very key…I see them as parents in the creative community here. Wait, what was the question?”

LW:  “It was about how you found these people. How they came to you.”

AT:  “Sydney has this great community of Filipino artists that I don’t think I’ve seen in other cities. Definitely not in Brisbane. Unfortunately, I only had one year in L.A. so I didn’t find that community in that time. I’m sure it exists. It feels very unique to see this group of people.”

LW:  “I have become more aware through these interviews that it exists—that there are these connections between the Philippines and Australia. Is this a historical relationship, or a more current immigration? Where does this come from?”

AT:  “There are Filipinos everywhere. It’s really great. It seems to be a current generation—actually, no, wait, I think we celebrated 50 years of diplomatic ties with the Philippines and Australia last year. There were a lot of events at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and all around Sydney City, with other regional galleries, as well. I guess it’s rising up in our consciousness.”

LW:  “Was your generation the first to be raised in Australia as Australians?”

AT:  “Yes, definitely. That’s correct.”

LW:  “Do you have family in the Philippines?”

AT:  “I do. My parents actually just retired there. My dad’s German and my mom’s Filipino, and they both moved to the Philippines. It’s strange. I didn’t think I’d miss them, but I really do. It’s weird. When they’re far away, you’re like, ‘Oh wait, come back.’”

[laughs]

LW:  “Those are actually all of my questions.”

AT:  “Really?”

LW:  “Yeah, it’s a simple interview process—five questions and they’re always the same. ‘When did you first think of yourself as an artist?’ is always super interesting. People sometimes really struggle with it.”

AT:  “That’s true. I guess pivotal to that answer is that when I was 25, I decided not to doubt it for five years.”

LW:  “Oh, that’s good.”

AT:  “Not have a plan B. Not working towards a plan B. Just to reassess it in five years time, so when I’m 30 years old.”

LW:  “This reminds me, though, of what your mom wrote on the board about determination and success, and desire.”

[laughter]

AT:  “Oh my God. It’s exhausting! In a good way.”

AT:  “Thanks for making the time to Skype, and for interviewing me.”

LW:  “Thank you. This has been great.”

Angel, 2015. Presented at Bus Projects. Photo: Athena Thebus

 

*On Friday July 27, Campbelltown Arts Center will stream Real Real 3, a performance featuring Athena in collaboration with Akil Ahamat and Ainslie Templeton, live on Facebook, at 1:30pm local time. Learn more here.*

Phone Tag: Interview with Eugene Choi

Posted on by

Body Scaffold II (Rest), 2015. Presented at Firstdraft, NSW. Photo: Kalanjay Dhir

In this Phone Tag interview, performance artist Eugene Choi talks about her practice as an artist and as a performer in the productions of others, and the dynamic exchange between the two. We also discuss her relationship with choreography and structure, learning from others, and trusting the work. Eugene earned a Bachelor of Visual Arts from Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney, and continues to develop her artistic practice in that city. She is currently on a residency at Artspace. Recent Phone Tag participant JD Reforma connected us for this interview.

 

 

Phone Tag is a generative interview format, where I ask each participating artist five questions (plus others as the discussion meanders). At the end, I ask him or her to introduce me to a working artist whose attitude and work they find interesting and/or inspiring, who I then interview with the same five questions.

*****

 

LW: “How do you know JD?”

EC: “Ah! I met JD through…I guess just the art scene here. The first time I met JD was when he was a director at First Draft, which is a smaller gallery here. I was still doing my undergrad.

I was young, and shy, and didn’t know who to talk to. I think JD just smiled at me, and then I said, ‘Hi.’ Then we just started there.”

LW: “Do you feel like the art scene in Sydney is a place where you see the same familiar faces, where it feels very known? Or is it bigger than that?”

EC: “I think so. Especially this month, because March is art month in Sydney and it’s just banging parties and a lot of openings. Also, the Biennale just opened. Art month is always so crazy when the Biennale is opening. Everyone comes down for it, all the international curators are here. It’s really quite sociable.”

LW: “How do you like the Biennale, have you seen a lot of it?”

EC: “I haven’t really had the time to go and focus on it. I was all over the place last weekend. I was just in a development for a performance, just a little two‑week development, and did the performance on Friday.”

LW: “Interesting, let’s circle back to that. Generally speaking, if you have to tell someone, what you do as an artist: what do you do?”

EC: “I usually say I’m a performance‑based artist who does live performance and also is a performer/dancer for other artists. I also make performance for video. I make a lot of video work, but usually the video works are constituted with these large sculptural installations. I never just make a video work. It’s always within a larger installation.

I would say I am a performance‑based artist working with installation. Multidisciplinary. I usually work with the materiality of steel. I make structures out of scaffolding, from galvanized steel pipe. I have clamps, so I make different shapes and different structures. Then there’s always a screen, mounted on the structure or next to it or something like that.”

Body Scaffold II (Rest), 2015. Presented at Firstdraft, NSW. Photo: Kalanjay Dhir

LW: “It sounds like you’re very invested in the making of these set‑ups…”

EC: “The structures. Yeah, I became interested in dance and then in choreography. I was already making smaller sculptures and structures without any performative element. Then, I started to get obsessed with movement and looking at the way the body moves and looking at habitual movement.

I was building a structure, and then, I had this realization: ‘Oh, I’m doing this without actually having to think.’ When I started working with the steel, it was actually really tough. I found it very difficult, and I had to think. It took me a long time, as well, to build things. But when I was building this particular structure, it only took me 30 minutes or something when it used to take me two hours. Suddenly, I thought, ‘I’m dancing. This is choreography.’ I felt like I found a secret language of dance, of choreography and the way the body moves. That’s what propelled me into looking at choreography with these structures.”

LW: “Have you been working with these structures for a few years now? Several years?”

EC: “I think it’s been since 2014. Upcoming to four years, yeah.”

LW: “That’s fantastic it still feels productive to be using these structures and changing them.”

EC: “Yeah, definitely. I’ve fallen in love with steel. I see it as a metaphor within all of my works. I’m obsessed with having equilibrium—having two opposing things and then making it whole. I always find that the performative side of me is very fluid and loose and kind of all over the place. Then, I see my structures as stability, weight, strength, grounding—a skeleton structure that holds me in a way.”

Biscuit Betrayal, 2018. A performance by Ivan Cheng, with Hyun Lee and Eugene Choi. Presented at Campbelltown Arts Centre for REAL REAL. Photo: Rafaela Pandolfini

LW: “I could see how the steel pipes would be the opposite of the body in a lot of ways. Could you tell me more about the performance that you did recently?”

EC: “This was me as a performer for another artist, Ivan Cheng, at Campbelltown Art Center. It’s an hour away from the city. It was launching a new program called Real Real, curated by Jess Olivieri.

The whole program is a collaboration, making a performance and having a two‑week development. Then to livestream the work rather than to bring an audience. This work was made just for the camera.

It was for Ivan Cheng. He’s an artist based in Amsterdam but he’s originally from Sydney. That’s how I know him. This was probably the fifth time I collaborated with him. We’ve got quite a great friendship/working relationship. Hyun Lee was also collaborating with us and she is a film director and as a photographer. She was doing the camera work, and doing the grading, that kind of thing. I was performing, and Ivan basically was writing, and also thought about choreography and movement and the whole thing really: costume, everything.

I struggle to explain this work. The way Ivan works is very interesting. He usually gets performers to perform as him. We’re just basically these bodies that are projecting what Ivan has to say.

He usually pre-records himself speaking. We’re wearing in‑ears during the performance and then just relaying what we’re hearing. It requires a lot of focus. It’s quite hard actually, but that was what we were working on. It was called Biscuit Betrayal.”

[laughter]

Biscuit Betrayal, 2018. A performance by Ivan Cheng, with Hyun Lee and Eugene Choi. Presented at Campbelltown Arts Centre for REAL REAL. Photo: Rafaela Pandolfini

LW: “I wonder what challenges there are for you to slip from your role as the artist-director person to a performer in somebody else’s performance. Do such experiences inspire your own practice?”

EC: “Definitely. I think I get most of my inspiration by working with others and for others. I’ve had the privilege of working with so many amazing choreographers and artists, like Xavier Le Roy. He works a lot with Tino Sehgal, and I’ve worked with Tino before. I’ve done a Marina Abramovic thing before.

I find that I learned a lot by doing, and also by experiencing these kinds of developments where you’re with a group of people or you’re with the artists. You’re just there together and you’re learning something or you’re trying to discover something.

I don’t know how to explain it. You’re just experiencing each other and experiencing the same thing. I feel that I learned a lot from that. That also inspires me. I feel that I learn a lot but then I teach others, and then they teach others and then I learn from them. It’s like this continual space of just learning and giving, giving and receiving, which is really beautiful.

I find that that informs a lot of my performative practice. I really don’t think I’d be making the work that I do if I didn’t delve into performing for others and with others.”

LW: “Your own artistic practice and acting as a performer—these are kind of parallel artistic tracks that have formed each other?”

EC: “Yes, definitely. I think so.”

Biscuit Betrayal, 2018. A performance by Ivan Cheng, with Hyun Lee and Eugene Choi. Presented at Campbelltown Arts Centre for REAL REAL. Photo: Rafaela Pandolfini

LW: “Are there specific influences or people you are thinking about that are really relevant to you in this moment?”

EC: “In this moment, yes. I really feel like I’m quite inspired by some of the artists around me at the moment in Sydney. I think my peers who are performing as well, and seeing the work that they’re making, that’s inspiring me a lot. Even just working with Ivan at Campbelltown and having that experience with him again. That’s given me a big boost and it’s so refreshing for me.”

LW: “Do you tend to look at other performance‑based practices, or do you ever look at a painter, or a photographer, or something outside of performance?”

EC: “I usually look at other performers and performance practices. I look a lot at sculptures. Artists that are working with objects.”

My mother only speaks Shanghainese when she talks to her brother on the phone (these plants are a gift for her), 2017. Presented at COMA Gallery, NSW & soon at ACE Open, ACT. Photo: Andrew Butler

LW: “Did you always want to be an artist?”

EC: “I actually used to want to be a musician. I used to want to be a singer and I played keys, and I used to want to go to music school. I used to paint and draw when I was in high school, but it was never satisfying. I was always very frustrated with myself and very confused as to how to just make art.

I studied art in high school and a few of my friends, they were wanting to continue with art. They were super confident and they would have their group. I was feeling very lost and flustered over it. Then I went through a bit of a dark period after high school, after finishing. I actually didn’t go on to study…I just had a gap year. That made me feel quite down because everyone in my year went on to study at college or Uni.

It was my dad who encouraged me. He was just like, ‘Why don’t you just go to art school?’ because he had a friend who was studying there. She was doing her master’s and she said that this art school was really great. So I made my portfolio in a month and then I applied. I got an interview, and I got through.

At this point I don’t think I considered myself as an artist. I think I only started to consider myself as one when I found the language that I can so easily speak through art, and that was through performing. I think that actually came in first year at Uni, and so it was actually quite early on in my undergraduate degree.”

LW: “Was it through a class or just being exposed to it?”

EC: “It was through a class, yeah. When I applied, I put down the Painting Studio. It was in my interview, with my portfolio of paintings, and portfolio of photographs and drawings. One of the people who were interviewing me, they questioned why I put painting as my first preference.

I was very baffled by that question because I was like, ‘Um, it’s just what I do.’ They were like, ‘I think you should maybe consider the Sculpture, Performance and Installation Studio.’ Something in me was like, ‘Oh I really trust them.’ Like, I feel like they would know. I actually started in that studio: the Sculpture, Performance and Installation Studio. The first project I did was a performance. I had never done a performance in my life; I wasn’t really that aware of performance art. Soon I delved into it. Making that first project, that was the first time I felt this kind of satisfaction or I felt this deep joy making art. That totally changed everything.”

SOLO PAUSES (amitié dans deux mondes), 2017. Presented at the Redlands Konica Minolta Art Prize, NSW, & WHO SPEAKS FOR A COMMUNITY? Sister Gallery, ACT. Photo: Christopher Arblaster

LW: “That’s fantastic. As a performance artist, maybe your answer to this question will be a little different to some others. What’s an ideal day in the studio? Do you have a studio‑based practice?”

EC: “Yes. I do. What I’ve been doing since coming to this studio…before this studio I was in another studio, but it was a really small shared space where there were desks. There wasn’t much room to move around. I really only wrote emails and stuff like that, or read or did research.

I like to work with loud music. I always put on some music. Since coming here, usually the first thing I do, I like to just get my body warm, and so I do stretching. Stretching to loud music is always so nice. People may say that that’s not a good combination, but I’m very used to it. I just like finding my pleasure points and making my body feel good and stretched out.

Usually I sit down and I make a game plan. I’m like, ‘What am I gonna do today? I’m gonna write this application.’ Or I’m feeling like, ‘Oh, today I’m just gonna make something with the structure, with the steel that I have.’

I walk around and pace around a lot in the studio. I used to do that a lot at Uni when I had a larger studio, and I’ve started doing that again. I think it’s just when I have space, I just like to move around and just constantly move. I like to clean the studio. I sing a lot, as well.”

LW: “I wonder when you’re preparing for a performance, whether that’s going to be recorded or live, is every movement scripted out? Do you know exactly what you’re going to do, or do you leave a lot of openness?”

EC: “It’s definitely very open. I would say that most of my performances are completely improvised. There’s always a guideline. I always know what I want to achieve, but then as soon as I turn that record button on, it just happens.

All I know is at one point in this time, you’re going to put your arm there, but I don’t know how I’m going to get there. I don’t know when I’m going to get there, but I’ll eventually get there. I really trust my body.”

LW: “I was going to say, it sounds like you trust yourself a lot.”

EC: “I think so. I never realized that but I think that I do, or I trust that something will happen. I trust in the work, maybe? I feel like a lot more happens when there’s room for that. I also trust in whatever happens, that it’s meant to be, that’s meant to be the work.”

​​Fortis (Small Death III), 2016. Presented at Seventh Gallery, VIC. Photo: Aaron Hoffman

LW: “You’re in Sydney, a fairly large city.”

EC: “Yes, a fairly large city, and apparently it has been voted the most expensive city in the world now.”

LW: “That’s terrible.”

EC: “It’s terrifying. I saw this list, and I was like, ‘Oh my god, like, it’s more expensive than London…’ ”

LW: “OK. You are in a fairly large city where it’s very expensive…”

EC: “Oh god!”

LW: “…but there’s a thriving art scene and chances to see art and talk with artists and have a community. So, good and bad. But then there’s also being in a smaller place, a quieter place, where maybe you can focus on making. The question is: do you think it’s more important for an artist to be in a bigger place like a Sydney, or maybe to get a little more removed from that?”

EC: “Oh gosh. I think that there just needs to be a balance. A lot of artists find that very hard and frustrating. I find that staying in a larger city where there’s a lot happening gets me moving and it keeps me motivated to just do. Maybe it does get a little bit stressful and then you think the moment you have some down time, you feel guilty and that’s so ridiculous. I find that I definitely do need time away and time alone. Quiet time, even just to focus on my mental health, and to give myself time to just relax and to catch up. For my body to catch up with my mind, for my mind to catch up with my body. Even on the emotional level, to just find that peace within the busy, busy time.”

LW: “I just have a final question for you, what’s next?”

EC: “I’ve actually got a few things lined up—a lot of performance. I’ve got a small performance that I’m doing for a friend. They’re having a show and they just invited three other performers to perform in particular songs on every Saturday, for a month. They’ve provided us with a track and then we interpret it the way that we want to. That’s the next thing that’s coming up. I think it’s quite sweet. It’s just under 20 minutes, a very nice low‑key kind of vibe.

The next thing, I go straight in for this heavy period of rehearsals in April, which is next month. It’s for a larger performance that will be presented at Next Wave festival in Melbourne, and that’s with a cast. There are five performers and there are also lines that we have to learn, like an experimental theater vibe. I’ve never done anything like that before, so that looks very interesting. It’s really been amazing working with actors. I’ve worked with dancers and other performance artists and performers, but never actors. That’s in May, but in May I will be showing an old video installation in a group show in Adelaide.

After that, there are some small, low‑key performances that are looking at documentation and how performance is documented. They’re very far away at the moment, so I haven’t given them much thought, but they’re there. I’m looking forward to actually making performance again, because I feel like I went through quite a long stint of just performing for others. Now I’m ready to make performances again for myself.”

LW: “That’s amazing. It sounds like a busy couple months coming up.”

EC: “Yeah, it feels busy. It looks busy in the calendar. I’m very grateful and thankful. I think having the studio space here is definitely going to help me.”

LW: “Thank you for your time. It was a pleasure speaking with you.”

EC: “Of course. Thank you.”