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PARTNER
PARTNER Artist & Curator Experimenta works with artists and filmmakers whose outlook and ambition go beyond their own home county. Is Experimenta a Hong Kong space, a Chinese or an Asian space ? The space is deeply rooted in Hong Kong but its soul is of the world. Intellectual or aesthetic art practice does not have to be based on the artist’s country of birth.
all stayed and lived at Experimenta. Filmmakers from the Seychelles Islands, South Africa, France, Germany, Romania, Pakistan, Japan, Australia , New Zealand had shown their work at the space. Naturally, artists from China and Hong Kong are an important part of the program.
The people who work and play in As part of the residency program, people Experimenta are probably the 0.001% who create comes from places from all four of the population. First, they loved corners of the world : Steven Eastaugh art. Second, they must have a distaste comes from the Antarctic and Argentina, of money. As every one gave their Sebastian Arrayo is from Chile, Susanne whole hearted attention and time; Burner from Germany, Li Hui from China many treated their work as part of their spiritual practice.
Staff Gallery manager, graphic designers, website maintenance, photographers, cameraman, computer support, carpenter, installation construction, writers, artists, receptionist, publicist, cleaners, printers. Experimenta is indebted to these contributors; very often these roles are performed by the same person. We are taking multitasking to another level.
Alliances Sometimes, the space is too small and our shows are staged off site. Curating the film program at the Film Tent from 2012 to 2013 at Clockenflap, live film and music performance at Hidden Agenda, talks and film program at Art Central are some of the friends who had lend a hand. Experimenta is most honoured to have guest curators Ms Valerie Doran and Mr John Batten who had curated Tacit Knowledge (Ah Kok
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Wong) , Hutfever (Steven Eastaugh) and Folie Ă deux ( Ho Sin Tung) respectively. Part of this publication is designed by Ms Kimi Lam, a Founder and Director of live space Hidden Agenda. Experimenta held many of our screenings at Hidden Agenda in 2012 to 2013. In 2016, Screen X Experimenta will have three film programs at the 2016 edition of Art Central. Experimenta will be taking part in talks with 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art on the ecology outside Art Fairs and with the Asia Society on New Media Arts.
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PARTNER
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Rachel Mason Live Rachel Mason Rock Musical Live at Hidden Agenda Show : 09/06/2013
The Lives of Hamilton Fish An experience of music and visual, daringly original filmmaker and musician Rachel Mason sings her rock musical in Hong Kong, Live at Hidden Agenda. The Lives of Hamilton Fish is a surreal rock opera about a serial killer and a statesman who share the name Hamilton Fish. Their lives are imagined in the mind of a newspaper editor who discovers that both men died on the same day when he publishes their obituaries on the same front page. The songs are sung in the first person as the editor lends his voice to all characters in the movie. Set in a highly stylized visual world which merges historic locations where some of the events actually took place, such as the Sing Sing Prison, the story unfolds as a surreal tale where the supernatural and historic facts merge into a wild, musical journey through an imagined past.
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The Huffington Post interview
The Huffington Post is an American online news aggregator and blog founded by Arianna Huffington. This is an extract from a piece written on HuffPost Entertainment.“It’s a rock opera film that told entirely through songs. There is a mystery about how an editor of a newspaper found out about these two men who died on the same day and how the lives of these men intersected. In my film, it was the wife of Hamilton Fish that tells Hamilton Fish that there is a little girl whom she met in her after life; and that this little girl told her that the serial killer Hamilton Fish who shared the same name as her husband killed her. And that’s the simple set up of the story. 68
Gina Wong, yes, she is the person who sparked everything. Experimenta sponsored my flight from New York to Hong Kong, and staged the film at Hidden Agenda. Gina came up with the idea that I should not just screen the film but I should sing it live, all 22 songs, with a live band from Hidden Agenda. That was the start of my US tour of the performance. Since then, I have staged the performance in more than 25 theatres around the country. It’s great to have Gina as a producer of the film. Together, we took this project to becoming one of the finalists to be selected for Sundance New
Frontier Section. We are now waiting for the results. It’s important for me to see women to do music and especially cross over music and art. I was recently talking to a curator and she had read so much about this film. It’s only two years after the very first screening that I did in Hong Kong. I really like to meet the person who curated it. I told her about you you are such a visionary and you saw it before anyone in this world. it’s such an American story and it’s particularly amazing that you got it, being completely outside the USA.
I am doing more than ever for Hamilton Fish. It’s crazy that it took two years to catch up. With the benefit of hind sight, it’s such a ground breaking thing that we did. “
I got her interested a long time after you did. 69
PARTNER
PEOPLE
Rachel Mason
Hidden Agenda
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OBSERVER
PEOPLE
VIEWER Audience ; Publics;Critics An engaged audience, the publics and art critics are the most precious gift for any creators and artist. On the one hand, Experimenta wanted them to be part of every exhibition, but on the other hand, the space did not want to be too close to the audience or the critic, You need to be distant to not to be swayed by popular trends and opinions. Experimenta does not create any work to favour, to please or even to entertain a certain group of audience.
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OBSERVER Neighbour
Art Observer
Our small back alley is home to three small owner operated shops. On the right hand side of Experimenta, there is Uncle Man who has been repairing found wood for 30 year. On the left hand side, there is Visage. Benky is a hair dresser by day and on every Saturday night for the past 20 years, he staged live jazz gigs. He is an avid reader and an observer of the cultural scene in Hong Kong.
Experimenta founder Gina See-Yuen Wong first met Tobias Berger in 2005. She was a board member of Para-site Art Space and he was hired as their chief executive and curator. That was at the time when there were no art fairs, little discussions of museums, and curators were still a relatively fresh term. As part of the occasion of this publication, read about Tobias’ 100 questions to Gina on art, power, life and more on our website :
Find out what he says about Experimenta and the evolving neighbourhood of Hollywood Road in our Experimenta talk series on our channel on Vimeo.
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www.experimenta.hk/100
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