Everything is rapidly changing nowadays around the world. And the COVID-19 pandemic has been accelerating that phenomenon while making a huge impact on the creation, circulation and consumption of the performing arts. Being “in-person” is the fundamental nature of the performing arts, but that became impossible, which posed limitations on international circulation, mobility and especially on international collaboration. Nonetheless, various efforts have been made around the world to maintain the ecosystem of the performing arts and preserve artists’ identity. “Deep Dive: Turning In and Turning Online”, a Zoom session hosted by Asia TOPA in Australia is a good example introduced here.

Asia TOPA “Deep Dive : Tuning In and Turning Online”
Asia TOPA is a triennial summer event led by Arts Centre Melbourne in which a consortium of artists present their work across the city. Its focus between 2017 and 2020 was on supporting artists resident in the Asia Pacific region to create a range of works across art forms, and to present this work at International festivals. In 2020, Asia TOPA hosted artists from 20 countries and regions, and presented 60 productions, exhibitions and free events to a total of 900,000 people in Melbourne. In addition, it offered Blak Lab for First Nation artists, as well as gatherings in partnership with APAM.

Asia TOPA was no exception as regards the impact of the pandemic, but their quick response to it was impressive. They moved their event to an online space under a new name, Virtual Lab, and utilized an online platform to allow artists from different areas to continue connecting and collaborating with each other. During the digital program hosted by Australian Performing Arts Market, PAUSE, PLAY, PERFORM, Asia TOPA shared their efforts to connect to, and work with artists online during the pandemic under the title “Deep Dive: Tuning In and Turning Online.”

Artists who participated in the Virtual Lab project used digital technology in their practices. Asia TOPA partnered with a digital studio, Sandpit. Sandpit has been working with Asia TOPA Lab for two years. People at Sandpit are working with the cultural sector on various projects, and have backgrounds in live performance and theater as artists. Notably, they have come up with a role of digital dramaturg to build a toolkit for live performance makers. It is a case of collaboration that has built confidence for the artists who, in the face of sudden online transition, were not yet able to develop capability for online work. The Zoom session shared the three works produced at the Virtual Lab, The Voyage of Bayini, Betty Error Trip and Lu Yang Delusional World, and heard about the creative process and ideas from the artists. The three works are available for the audiences on the Asia TOPA’s website.

Three Projects Created during Virtual Lab
Let’s look into the projects one by one. Firstly, The Voyage of Bayini started from Blak LAB for the First Nation artists. It is a new cross-cultural work with ancestral connections in music, song and dance created by a group of First Nations artists from Taiwan and Arnhem Land. Sang Mei-Chaun and Labaga Taru from Taiwan, Miku Performing Arts’ Director Rachael Walli and Producer Kath Papas met in 2018 for the first time at a residency through Artback NT. For six months during the residency, their interest grew about each other’s cultures. They were to attend a residency together in Australia through Blak LAB in 2020, but due to the pandemic they instead collaborated through Zoom. Rachael said working at home during the pandemic has been good and felt right, while Kath said she was happy that they were able to continue with their work throughout this period.

Betty Error Trip is the outcome of a residency with the participation of Taipei-based sound artist and performance maker DJ Cheng Yi-Ping, AKA Betty Apple and a Sydney-based experimental performance maker Emma Maye Gibson, AKA Betty Grmble.The two artists both use the name Betty professionally. They created a fun exploration of the glitch (screen freezing) space between the physical, the digital, the tangible and the mystical. They said that the current situation in which the whole world is going through a pandemic feels like a system glitch and that’s what inspired this project. They also created an Instagram filter that anyone can use to become a Betty themselves. They hope anyone who uses the filter will be able to receive their energy. Betties defined the use of the filter as their shared reality. This work will be featured at the National Museum of Australia along with the instagram filter.

The last project is Chinese multidisciplinary artist Lu Yang’s new work, Lu Yang Delusional World. It was a collaborative project between artist Lu Yang and creative producer Mat Spisbah. Delusional World is an evolution of Lu Yang’s previous work Electromagnetic Brainology. By using motion capture avatar technology, he built this work around the digitalization of human identities. Mat worked as a consultant on avatar and environment designs, and facilitated the building of avatars and researched new areas of exploration in 3D environment textures and pathways.

Mat found how the Lab extended the possibilities of Lu Yang and himself working together interesting. They started working together from early 2020, and the Virtual Lab allowed them even more possibilities to extend this motion capture performance work and turn it into all these different iterations. Mat emphasized that his relationship with Lu Yang was purely digital, just as it was for the Betties’ project. Despite having to use thousands of Wechat messages and calls, and Zoom calls for their collaboration, they were able to get great results. it was remarkable that, without having met anyone, they could facilitate an international collaboration like this.

New Possibilities of Online Collaboration
The closing question of “Deep Dive: Tuning In and Turning Online” was whether participants wanted to bring in a digital expert as a part of their creative team, or whether they wanted to add technology to their work and become experts themselves. To that, all artists answered that they need experts in their team. According to Stephen, how we conceive online storytelling needs to be thought through differently because time passes differently and narratives are told differently on screen. And that feeds into producing, communicating and the audience experience. Therefore the role of ‘digital dramaturg’ is necessary. In my opinion, that is the most important point made in this Zoom session.

Stephen said they did “a concurrent series of online developments ensuring that creativity continues to define artists” and that also reverberates loudly in the Korean art sector. He said that the Virtual Lab wasn’t supposed to document the process absolutely or even to prefigure what the final outcome was, but it was meant to document the experience of being shut down in multiple countries through the lens of imagining and sharing and creativity, and that’s the most important thing. I think this philosophy of Stephen’s is what made this collaboration possible, and I hope to see support for projects which have a similar approach in Korea. Before the pandemic, the performing arts sector and the artists were used to working on stages. However, the pandemic has forced them to work in the online environment and allowed them to discover new talents. It is a new perspective in which we can see the pandemic as an opportunity. Exploring your identity as an artist in various environments without limiting yourself to ‘stage’ or ‘theater’ will allow you to grow as an artist.

To quote Bertrand Russell, a philosopher and Nobel laureate in literature, “the only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.” Perhaps a “cooperation oriented mindset” is what artists need the most in order to survive in the post pandemic world.

Min-young Kim
Min-young is Director of Artesapience, a convergence art production company. She also works with Ghost Group, Melancholy Dance Company, Jung logyee Dance Project and Company Sisense. She has developed dance films and performances including Übermensch, Mobility, Jubilee Research and Anatomy. As the official influence of SK Telecom’s metaverse platform, ‘ifland’, she presented contemporary dance for the first time in Metaverse. Min-young co-developed a dance program, “All about Dance” with two choreographers Hoyeon Kim, and Jaewoo Jung and they run the program at 10:30 PM every Wednesday. She focuses on exploring ways to bring dance into more people’s daily lives in various formats,m which go beyond the boundaries of performance in order to make their daily lives, and the world, better.