Song From Far Away || Far Away From Song

EVENT DESCRIPTION

So Far, So…. Together with his creative team, they blend monologues, body movement, live choral singing, beatboxing, electronic music, real-time video, and multimedia installations, transforming multiple disciplines into one artistic journey that transcends life and death, offering the audience an experience that is both intimate and communal. Constructed over 365 days and building on the work in progress, a complete version of two interdependent performances (Song From Far Away and Far Away From Song) will be held in two venues, The Turns and The Lab. Both venues are simultaneously connected but distant, where time and space overlap and concur together. A single ticket enables the audience to pass between the realms of life and death.

Two venues, two forms of participation: one is a fluid, immersive environment—hotels, airports, trains—where one experiences letter writing through sound and music in headphones. Here, audience members are onlookers, passers-by…strangers. The other is a place for spiritual retreat: The body pauses to reach healing through meditation channels. Audience members become participants in an intimate ritual.

Song From Far Away is a journey home: a return to an estranged family and forgotten relationships. The seven letters from the older brother to his deceased younger brother mourn the past while confronting his own failings. The physical body sways between light and shadow, in a kind of requiem, as the sounds of everyday objects transform into laments—a transmission of contemporary songs of spiritual connection. The multiplicity of senses creates a poetic field as the ignited letters turn into rising smoke.

Far Away From Song becomes the echo of what is absent in the play: The soul sheds the weight of the body, moving in the bardo realm in response to the letters from the older brother. At the end of the journey, their farewell provides for a final reunion.

The cast will be announced in due course, please stay tuned.
Ivanhoe Lam is the Artist-in-Residence of East Kowloon Cultural Centre.