Light in Infinite Darkness

Article

Amy Chan
light artist

中文版本︎

My artistic interest in the aesthetic characteristics of light in performance, which I often refer to as “the musicality of light” (1), can be traced back to my first encounter with HKNME in the Modern Academy II 2016-2017 Spaces, Traces and Places workshop. As a light artist working mainly in theatre before, the experience of exploration in music and space with a group of musicians and composers formed an initial and important part of my research on the musicality of light. The research continues till now and forms the basis of the creative concept of light in the HKNME project Music & Moving Image 3.0: Infinito Nero, an ecstasy in one act by Salvatore Sciarrino.

Although working on different senses, music and light in fact have much in common. Both light in theatre and music are time-based arts. Both are flexible and potentially polyphonic media. Light is indispensable in performances including music. However, in many of the cases, light is mostly functional, representational, illusionary and atmospheric. Much effort and technological development are put forward to make light synchronize and play the double with music. Rethinking these conventions of light in music performances with inspirations from the concept of postdramatic theatre, I reexamine and explore the potentiality of light being an independent artistic medium, with its own musicality, in music performances and, this time, in Infinito Nero.

Although infinite darkness is in the title of this mini-opera, the work itself is a composition of the intensity of sudden sound amidst a lingering but never static silence/ darkness. The ambiguity is rooted in the protagonist Maria Maddalena who was though canonized by the Church but also “an unpleasant, a ‘devilish’ figure” as observed by the composer. The voice of “prestissimo flashes . . . on the edge of ululation” of mezzo soprano is collaborating with and yet subtly interrupted by “the sounds of breathing, of panting and of heartbeats” of the ensemble. (2) For me, the sound of the ensemble is like the corporeal sensation and innermost feelings of the protagonist, but also from time to time fleeting her body and mind in ecstasy.

Tungsten light bulb is the key visual component to tell this ambiguous narrative of darkness. In a white cube gallery space and behind a transparent screen with video projection by Arnont Nongyao, a collection of tungsten light bulbs on the light stands of various heights surround the mezzo soprano and the ensemble. One light bulb closer to mezzo soprano is bigger and stands out from the rest. At the beginning of the work, there are repetitive “breathing” and sometimes pulsating light movements in the collection of light bulbs as well as scattered random light movements in the bigger light bulb, resonating with the breathing and beating sounds of the ensemble and intermittent voice of the mezzo soprano. However, as the work progresses, the relatively synchronized light and music gradually dissociate. Sometimes, light remains with the protagonist and the ensemble. At other times, light is in rhythmic patterns and tempos deviated from the music, like an unknown force fleeting from and beyond the mezzo soprano and the ensemble. Through this conceptual reworking of the musical structure, light with its changing repetitive patterns creates a musical composition of its own right and transforms into a polyphonic medium in the work.

Audience is also part of this ambiguous and paradoxical interplay of music and light. A similar collection of light bulbs on stands, with one bigger and other smaller, scatters among the audience on the other side of the screen. The bigger light bulb among the audience is in line with the one adjacent to mezzo soprano, like a mirror image on both sides of the screen. The audience is immersed in a light composition resembling yet not doubling that for the ensemble while remaining the observers in a distance. This alienated yet immersive light-space composition creates a tension in which the audience is both inside and outside of the body and mind of the protagonist. Infinito Nero is not only an ecstatic music drama of Maria Maddalena, but also a transformative journey between darkness and light, and silence and music for the audience.

Notes:

(1) For a more detailed examination of the musicality of light and theatre, please refer to my essay “Notes on Light: The Musicality of Light and Theatre” in the June 2020 Issue No 21 of Critical Stages/Scènes critiques: The IATC journal/Revue de l'AICT. (https://www.critical-stages.org/21/notes-on-light-the-musicality-of-light-and-theatre/)

(2) HKNME Infinito Nero house program note.

Biography

Light artist, theatre practitioner, artistic director of Drama COLLABoratory and pathologist. Interest in expanding the notion of light in postdramatic theatre through the exploration of musicality, performativity and theatricality of light in performance and installation, and the in-betweens of light-music, performance-installation and arts-medicine. Lightscape (light and space) is the co-performer, protagonist and antagonist in her works.

Her major works include the interdisciplinary museum theatre performance and installation project The Hong Kong Plague of 1894 (Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences and CACHe, 2014) , light installation Cabinet of Curiosities (2016) in group exhibition PseudoCollection - What Do Artists Collect (1a Space, 2016), site-specific light installation-performance Morbid Anatomy (Pathology Teaching Laboratory, 2016), solo light installation Memento Mori: Sonata for Light (Lumenvisum, 2017), installation performances Things That Talk (2020) and Inter-Face (2021). Her online lecture performance Remembrance of Amnesia (2020), reflecting on pandemic and memory in Hong Kong, was presented in My Documents | Share your screen! , the online performance series created and curated by renowned Argentinian theatre maker Lola Arias, and streamed on YouTube and the digital platforms of Künstlerhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt am Main, Kampnagel Hamburg and Münchner Kammerspiele of Germany, and Kaserne Basel of Switzerland.

Amy crosses the borders between different media, disciplines and communities. She collaborates with artists of different disciplines, with particular interest in light-music collaborations. She work with celebrated composers and musicians including Ken Ueno, Hong Kong New Music Ensemble and The Up:Strike Project, in various productions of New Vision Arts Festival, West Kowloon Freespace Jazz Fest and Sound Forms 2021 Tai Kwun Edition, etc., covering new work premieres, contemporary music, classical music, electronic music and free improvisation. She is also the long-term artistic collaborator and tutor of St James Creation, the workshop and gallery under St James' Settlement for artists of different abilities for more than 10 years.

As a lighting designer, director, performer and playwright working for various productions since 1991, she has designed lighting for over 80 theatre productions, art gallery and installations, including A Tree to be Found, the installation artwork in Para/Site in 2003, the award-winner of Hong Kong Arts Biennial 2003 and the collection of Hong Kong Museum of Art. Her original autobiographical theatre performance Two girls from Ngau Tau Kok (as co-creator, co-director, performer and lighting designer) has re-run in various venues for 5 times throughout 9 years. The play was adapted into a graphic novel of the same title and an English radio play broadcasted in the Worldplay series 2003 of BBC world channel. The original Chinese script and the translated English script were published respectively.

A Master of Fine Arts (with distinction) graduate of Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, major in lighting design with core research on light in postdramatic theatre, her artistic research has been presented in various international conferences such as The Congress of the Society for Theatre Studies of Germany and Performance Studies International annual conferences, and is published in peer-reviewed journals including Performance Research and Critical Stages. She was an invited speaker of the Postdramatic Theatre Worldwide Symposium (2019) in Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Germany, discussing the resonance and perspectives of postdramatic theatre in Hong Kong and on her own light-theatre works 20 years after the first publication of internationally renowned theatre scholar Hans-Thies Lehmann's groundbreaking book.

https://www.amychan-light.com/

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Light in Infinite Darkness