Para Site

Ensemble: Reading and Conversation with Samwai Lam and Kwai-Cheung Lo

Date
Jun 30, 2024
Time
3:30 pm – 5:00 pm

Venue

10B, Wing Wah Industrial Building
Quarry Bay, Hong Kong
Installation views of 'Sounding Lines' by Studio Lights On; installation views of 'Soft breath' by Ray Leung｜「測深線」展覽現場攝影：Studio Lights On｜「微息」展覽現場攝影：Ray Leung

Relationships, systems, and entanglements are among the common themes inquired by ‘Soft breath’ and ‘Sounding Lines’, on view simultaneously at Para Site. Both exhibitions stage constellations of works, with imagery queer and more-than-human at times, for navigations and associations.

We will convene an intertextual dialogue with writer-critic Samwai Lam and writer-scholar Kwai-cheung Lo, moderated by Jessie Kwok, Assistant Curator. Both Lam and Lo are invited to share a text from their oeuvre to read in parallel with each other and against the two exhibitions, in order to further open up thematic discussions around the exhibitions from different perspectives.

Kwai-cheung Lo has written a new piece for the session: taking inspiration from his invitation to Para Site, he reflects upon the myriad ways in which organisms intervene into their surroundings. Samwai Lam has selected an excerpt from her novel about dance, juxtaposing the tension between bodies and minds. 

The event will be in Cantonese. No RSVP required. Excerpts of text are available in Chinese.

About the authors

Samwai Lam

Samwai Lam earned her MA and bachelor’s degree in Comparative Literature from The University of Hong Kong. Her art writing has been shortlisted for the International Awards for Art Criticism (IAAC). Her novels include White Dirt (《白漬》, 2017) and Moon Phase (《月相》, 2020). A recipient of the Literature Award from The House of Hong Kong Literature, Lam’s short stories have appeared in Fleurs des Lettres (《字花》), and Esquire HK. In 2022, she was elected as the Spotlight Author of Aesop Queer Library. In 2023, she was the writer-in-residence for the Chinese Writers’ Workshop at Hong Kong Baptist University.

 

Kwai-cheung Lo

Kwai-cheung Lo, professor of the Department of Humanities and Creative Writing at Hong Kong Baptist University, specializes in trans-Chinese cinemas and cultural studies. With a PhD in Comparative Literature from Stanford University, he is the author of Excess and Masculinity in Asian Cultural Productions, and Chinese Face/Off: The Transnational Popular Culture of Hong Kong. The University of Michigan Press will publish his forthcoming book Ethnic Minority Cinema in China’s Nation-State Building. He was the editor of Entangled Waterscapes in Asia, Chinese Shock of the Anthropocene: Image, Music and Text in the Age of Climate Change, and a Chinese-language anthology entitled Re-Sighting Asia: Deconstruction and Reinvention in the Global Era. He has published articles in Camera Obscura, Cultural Politics, Cultural Studies, boundary 2, positions: east asia cultures critique, Postcolonial Studies, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, among others. A creative writer in the Chinese language, his Chinese publications include short stories and poems.