Performance art festival in Hong Kong aims to expose a wider audience to a unique and powerful art form
- The three-day Per.Platform festival at the Eaton HK hotel in Jordan starts July 22 and will feature 18 mostly women and/or queer performers, 16 from Hong Kong
- Pieces last from 30 minutes to five hours and focus on the idea of fluidity and impermanence with regards to space, time, body, gender roles and sexual identity
Performance artists often create site-specific works that are complete only with the engagement of a live audience. This makes their creations necessarily impermanent and, let’s face it, difficult to experience because you have to be in the right place at the right time.
That’s one of the reasons for Per.Platform, a performance art festival that launched in 2021 and is now preparing for its latest edition at the Eaton HK hotel, which opens on Friday.
The line-up is a refreshing mixture of established names and new talent being mentored as part of the festival.
The performers, most of whom are women and/or queer, consist of 16 Hong Kong artists and two from Japan. Pieces last from 30 minutes to five hours and focus on the notion of fluidity and impermanence with regards to space, time, body, gender roles and sexual identity.
Founded by Juliana Chan, gallery manager of 1a Space, and performance artist Florence Lam, the festival aims to expose a wider audience to an art form that, at its best, allows complete strangers to share a common experience that provides them with powerful new perspectives.
The choice of artists aligns with Eaton HK’s belief in inclusion and diversity, says its director of culture, Joseph Chen King-yuen, who is also in charge of the hotel’s Tomorrow Maybe art space, which will host this year’s festival.
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Yuki Kobayashi and Towako Sano, from Japan, will be artists-in-residence at Eaton HK until August. As well as performing during the festival, Kobayashi will be mentoring other artists in the show alongside educator, curator and artist Monique Yim Wing-ka.
Other performers include Glo Chan Cheuk-yan, Chan Xiyong, Kenneth Choi Yat-ming, Tracy Kwok, Liao Jiaming, Liz Pong and Ice Wong Kei-suet.
The finale, on day three, will be a group improvisation by eight local artists, lasting four to five hours – the fruition of a week’s worth of art workshops guided by Lam.
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“The first hour will be warm-up. Next, the artists will start doing contact improvisation. In the last hour, [all guests] can participate in the performance, including kids,” Chen says.
Tickets are available for the whole three-day festival or as a single-day pass, with prices ranging from HK$160 (US$20) to HK$580. Student and early-bird discounts are available. Proceeds go towards supporting the artists and Per.Platform, and all tickets include one drink.
“Tomorrow Maybe X Per.Platform: Fluidity and Impermanence”, 4/F Eaton HK, 380 Nathan Road, Kowloon, Hong Kong, July 22-24.
