Dec 22 2017

Till We Meet Again: Spring Workshop

by Ysabelle Cheung

Upon entering Hong Kong’s Spring Workshop on December 10, the space’s final day of public activities, I was drawn to a sign on a table lined with tumblers that exclaimed: “Last Straw!” Picking up a glass of the mysterious, cloudy liquid and admiring the handwritten cursive, I was once again amused and humbled by the intimate details infused in the discourse and projects exchanged at Spring, by artists, curators, musicians, gardeners and many more participants who have resided in and worked at the cavernous space over the six years of its operation.

In the humid climates of April 2016, wild fungi began to sprout from the green carpet of ESKYIU’s Industrial Forest (2013), while contact between the slender copper sticks created the occasional chime. All images courtesy Spring Workshop.

“Don’t drink that yet!” a startled waiter hurried over to us. “It’s not finished!” He explained with an apologetic smile that we had been drinking just the cordial-like base, which was meant to be topped with bubbling soda. That explained why the liquid tasted similar to Spring’s offered experiences: puckery, lively, pleasantly discordant and heavily undiluted.

When Spring Workshop opened its doors in December, 2011, it might have been misinterpreted as a gallery, or a rentable artist studio, or even a nonprofit research center, but those who visited the premises quickly realized that it encompassed all three and much more. I first visited Spring on the premise of interviewing founder Mimi Brown about the then still-nascent artistic neighborhood of Wong Chuk Hang and her intentions to dip into and contribute to existing wells of culture without drawing too much water from it. Six years and 351 collaborators later, Spring has not just presented a full calendar of programming, from talks to performances to exhibitions and meetings, but also exemplified a model that is actively pushing its way forward in Hong Kong (as with smaller organizations such as Things That Can Happen, Any Other Business and Holy Motors): one that is cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary, often short-lived because of rental and financial constraints, yet nevertheless impactful. In a city such as Hong Kong, which gleams with alluvial power in its steel-and-glass monuments and millions of hurried footsteps, one might find simple visual, literary or musical peace in these places and memories. In homage of that, I’ve selected highlights from Spring’s archive as a look back on those experiences, which provide reflections on the city’s cultural expansions as well.

Indonesian artist MELATI SURYODARMO performed her infamous Exergie Butter Dance (2000) on dozens of stacks of butter at Spring Workshop in August, 2012, as part of the collateral off-site programming for “太平天國/Taiping Tianguo, A History of Possible Encounters: Ai Weiwei, Frog King Kwok, Tehching Hsieh, and Martin Wong in New York,” presented by Spring and Para Site.

Dozens of wood, steel and glass spheres filled Spring for QIU ZHIJIE’s 2013 exhibition “The Universe of Naming,” accompanied by a network of ink and found objects which aimed to map disputed territories. For this project, Qiu invited a group of university students to collaborate on the mapping.

Under the Spring outdoor canopy, Indian anti-colonial and post-colonial resistance songs were performed by musicians SUMANGALA DAMODARAN, PRITAM GHOSAL, MARK ARANHA NEELAMBARI BHATTACHARYA, BILLY from the grassroots folk band mininoise, and SIMON HUI from the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble. Co-presented by Asia Art Archive, the 2014 event aimed to explore song as a vehicle to discuss complex socio-historical narratives.

The 2014 exhibition “Islands Off the Shores of Asia,” co-presented with Para Site, addressed the myth of archipelagos and small islands, which are often the subjects of tension between the lands that they are adjacent to. Taking a futuristic view to the theme of the show, MING WONG installed a silver-foil tunnel through which one could walk and eventually reach a looped video of the artist as an astronaut, floating as if in space to the Cantonese operatic arias of Princess ZhaoJun Crosses the Border. “Science fiction is a space where one can reimagine societies and identities,” Wong has said of the piece.

One of the earliest projects curated by director-curator Christina Li at Spring was the group show “Days Push Off Into Nights,” which she described as a “series of situations” that probe instances of stillness, attempting to draw meaning from them. For example, MAGDALEN WONG’s Golden Curtain (2010/2015) (background) features a row of gold tape that delicately unfurled over the duration of the show, representing a slow unwinding after a long day at work, or after months of political tension.

In a darkened room, Hong Kong-based percussionist Heidi Lau performed Turkish artist CEVDET EREK’s subtle, yet melodic SSS – Shore Scene Soundtrack (2006– ) at the opening of “Days Push Off Into Nights,” which entailed her moving her palms across a strip of plush carpet, evoking sounds of the ocean. Later, audience members picked up the instruction manual left by Erek for the piece and attempted the performance themselves.

Installation view of WU TSANG’s theatrical film installation Duilian (2016), presented in 2016 after the artist’s six-month residency at Spring. The film touches upon the Qing Dynasty-era female revolutionary Qiu Jin (1875–1907), presenting her narrative through a contemporary lens to discuss gender and queer politics in Asia.

For WONG WAI YIN’s solo exhibition in 2016, “Without Trying,” the artist destroyed older pieces and placed them inside these triangular crates. About motherhood and the roles of women in society, the show reflected on the five years after Wong gave birth to her son, during which she underwent a difficult creative and personal transformation.

Often parsing musical notes to its most basic rhythmic forms, the multi-site projects of American composer and artist ARI BENJAMIN MEYERS encompassed Litany and Rapture (2017), which entailed members of the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble embarking on a durational journey where they performed every single piece in their repertoire; six external solos performed by cultural workers in their offices in Hong Kong; and finally, Anthem (2017), a composition which drew from all aspects of the project. The performances were part of the programming for Kunsthalle for Music, a music-based platform commissioned by Spring and Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, a longtime collaborator of the space.

Concluding the residency of Hollywood actress RASHIDA JONES at Spring in 2017 was a private discussion that sought to bring to the fore discussions of sex, female identity and feminist agendas in film—topics that are often pushed to the sidelines in Hong Kong. The session featured Spring founder Mimi Brown and Jones, as well as local advocates for female empowerment: transwoman Brenda Alegre, who teaches about sexuality and gender at Hong Kong University; author and educator Katrien Jacobs, currently teaching on culture and sexuality at Chinese University of Hong Kong; and business owner Vera Lui, founder of Sally’s Toy, the first female-friendly intimate lifestyle store in the city.

KOKI TANAKA’s timeline, aggregated by volunteers who camped out overnight at Spring to brainstorm Hong Kong’s collective history, was one of three presentations that comprised Spring’s final program.

Having spent many months at Spring previously researching Vietnamese refugees in the city, TIFFANY CHUNG presented an overwhelmingly detailed project that narrates the journeys of these communities from 1975 up to now, mounting documentary videos as well as images and photocopied government records that make up a comprehensive picture of a displaced population.

As part of the final program of Spring, “Sailing Through Ha Bik Chuen’s Archive,” curated by John Batten, featured paraphernalia found in the late artist’s residences that documented every single exhibition that occurred in Hong Kong from the 1960s to the 2000s. Co-presented with Asia Art Archive, the show also highlighted Ha’s relationship with Wong Chuk Hang and neighboring Aberdeen, revealing the history of the print industry in these areas as well as an iconic sculpture by the artist that has been hidden in plain sight for nearly 50 years.

What does Wong Chuk Hang smell like? In 2017, Los Angeles-based artist and Spring resident ERIK BENJAMINS attempted to distill the olfactory notes of the district and its surrounding areas into a liquid soap that is “driven with aquatic notes and balanced out with some spice, some sweetness and some funk.” A few hours after I tried the soap for myself, the day it arrived from Los Angeles’ Institute for Art and Olfaction, where it was produced, I noticed that the scent was growing stronger, dominating my sensory environment and peripheries. Even on dry hands, the perfume of the soap was overpowering, steamy, and determined to be remembered.

The reflective metallic poles of ESKYIU’s Industrial Forest (2013) rooted the space in the history of Wong Chuk Hang, which literally translates from Cantonese as “yellow bamboo pit.” In 2017, after a summer of intense typhoons and inclement weather, the forest was wrecked, and the poles skewed—fitting, perhaps, for the final year of Spring. Of the future of the space itself, founder Mimi Brown has said that “Spring will continue to fund some projects as well as desks for artists and non-profits at the co-working space that will inhabit our space. The key difference is that we won’t be running residencies or a space or an on-site program.”

Ysabelle Cheung is the managing editor of ArtAsiaPacific.

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