2022TAF: Presence

 The manipulative powers of technology are ever more latent as they become increasingly omnipresent and intuitive; the dependence on telepresence since the global pandemic has further intensified this phenomenon. In Presence, visual artist and theatre-maker Royce Ng creates a visceral encounter with the audience through objects, a surrogate performer and a digital avatar, drawing our attention to technology’s role as a perception- and consciousness-changing medium. Crossing gender, race and species, this virtual presence investigates the double-edged potential of technological manipulation and emancipation. 

A local performer on stage will be inhabited by Royce Ng remotely. Facilitated by hologram and other immersive technologies, Presence proposes a mind-blowing foray that foregrounds the horizon-expanding possibilities of technology which have changed human relationship to the world. How far can we push the boundary of presence? What would a world with these contemplative, reflexive technologies look like?

Royce Ng, Hong Kong and Australia

Born in Australia and based in Hong Kong, Royce Ng started his practice strictly as a visual artist before venturing more recently into performing arts. His work features a strong visual component constructed through various digital media technologies such as 3D animation, VR and holograms and deals with the intersections of modern Asian history, technology, drugs and aesthetics.

His first stage performance, Kishi the Vampire (2016), delved into the life of Japanese colonial administrator, war criminal, and then prime minister Nobusuke Kishi, narrating his convoluted history as a vampire story. In Ghost of Showa (2017), he further looked at the spectres that haunt the economy of modern East Asia and the darkly ambiguous legacy of opium in the development of the Asian state. His third piece Queen Zomia (2018), traces the histories of opium through the figure of Olive Yang, the bisexual, cross-dressing warlord who controlled the illicit opium and heroin trade in the Golden Triangle. His latest performance Presence deals with the concept of “presence” in technology.

Materialise 

Materialise is a Hong Kong based performing arts production company that collaborates both with artists from Europe and Asia, calling works into life and disseminating them in both continents and beyond.

Materialise accompanies the production and distribution of the work of Royce Ng (HK), Fang Yun Lo (TW), Xiao Ke & Zi Han (CN), Ayaka Nakama (JP), orangcosong (JP), and Shingo Ota (JP).