Performance
In Search of the Miraculous
A few years ago, I came across a wonderful little postcard in the flat files of a gallery. The image depicted a man on a small sailboat against a vast ocean, the horizon bright on one side—almost effaced—and dimmer on the other, doing what a seascape does best: herald endlessness.
It was a work by Dutch artist Bas Jan Ader, who explored time, place, and history through gestures both minute and grand. This piece was his final work.
Ader drew on the Romantic iconography of the lone traveler in an era when such figures had all but vanished. He took to the sea in a small sailboat, attempting to cross the unforgiving Atlantic Ocean. Lost at sea, he left behind an ominous title and body of work: In Search of the Miraculous.
Named after this piece, Art Central’s performance program gathers artists who share Ader’s élan in their practices. They approach history, materials, and the body with resonant gestures grounded in seeking—playing and experimenting with what they’ve been given, whether from past iterations of themselves or the longue durée of time. By confronting what has passed, they open up generative spaces of play.
Aaditya Sathish
Curator
Charmaine Poh
in the shadow of the cosmic, 2023
with Viola Grief and Florence Lam
Lecture-Performance
in the shadow of the cosmic (2023) is a performance-lecture exploring the multiplicity of the avatar. Expanding Poh’s YOUNG BODY series, the character E-Ching is placed in conversation with vocal clones, anime characters, 3D influencers, and other entities in a vast digital constellation. The performance-lecture traces a technological lineage from the East Asian economic miracle of the 1980s and ’90s and the emergence of techno-orientalism, positing that the digital image of the East Asian femme body was borne at a confluence of these historical flows. Pertinent to the work is the recursive logic of Daoism, in which image, self and cosmology reverberate in endless loops. Combining video, live performance and sound, in the shadow of the cosmic is a call to re-open questions of being and becoming.
Xiaoshi Qin
The Landscape Between Us II, 2022
Lecture-Performance
If we gaze at the landscape long enough, will it share its secrets with us in return? What has it seen that we have not? Perhaps the wind carries echoes of lost voices, or the river holds reflections of forgotten journeys. Perhaps the trees whisper stories that only those who listen closely can hear.
In the lecture performance The Landscape Between Us II (2022), artist Xiaoshi Qin will share stories of folklore and history from the Pearl River estuary through her personal encounters with the land. For years, she has wandered through these shifting terrains, listening to the silent imprints of time. As part of her artistic practice, she has developed a ritual of hiding objects—crafted from her imagination and inspired by collected stories—within the mountains and rivers and forgotten corners of the region. These objects, concealed yet present, form a quiet dialogue between the artist and the landscape.
During her journeys, the artist has uncovered traces of South China’s pirate history, local stories scribbled on the crumbling walls of village temples, and poems left behind by sailors in abandoned pavilions. Each encounter, whether an artifact, a voice, or a shadow, weaves together a tapestry of memory and myth. Through sound, objects, and images, the artist blurs the line between fiction and reality. In doing so, the landscape itself becomes a storyteller, revealing the quiet, untold narratives of the Pearl River Delta.
IV Chan
Our Birthdays (uncut), 2025
Performance
The legacies of queerness and horror films are insatiably intertwined. In her newly commissioned performance for Art Central 2025, IV Chan draws inspiration from the campy formalism of B-movies, particularly within the genre of horror comedy, to explore its grotesquerie while reflecting on the figures of vampire and motherhood in the Chinese cinematic landscape.
Hou Lam Tsui & Wong Pak Hang
Reaching This Point is the Limit, 2025
Lecture-Performance
Departing from their experience of wandering through a Sham Shui Po shopping mall filled with old CCD cameras and DV camcorders, the artists revisit their personal sticky memories through outdated, malfunctioning, and low-pixel electronic devices. They attempt to piece together fragments of the past, present, and future while tracing the idea of death amid the virtual, digital dimension, rethinking the impossibility of nostalgia.
Shavonne Wong
Talking to Machines: When AI Becomes More Than a Tool, 2025
Lecture-Performance
This talk isn’t about AI as technology. It is about us, our instincts, our attachments, and how AI is quietly replacing moments of human connection. The lecture-performance is an art experiment that explores what happens when we start turning to machines for comfort, conversation, and understanding. Everyone talks about what AI can do, but few ask what it is doing to us. Why do we treat AI like it is real, even when we know it is not? What does it mean when an algorithm starts to feel like a confidant? Through Eva, we will examine the psychology behind our interactions with AI, the ethical and emotional questions they raise, and what this shift reveals about who we are becoming in a world where the line between human and artificial connection is starting to blur.
Wong Ka Ying (KY)
Hong Kong Art Market Overview, Analysis and Forecast, 2025
Lecture-Performance
Join artist-investigator Wong Ka Ying (KY) for a provocative deep dive into the intricacies of the Hong Kong art market. Blurring the line between corporate presentation and experimental performance, “Hong Kong Art Market Overview, Analysis, and Forecast” (2025) offers an incisive yet playful take on market dynamics. This live event combines sharp market analysis, fortune-telling elements, feng shui applications, and a fearless dismantling of prevailing myths—all brought to life with A.I.-generated visuals that revel in their own absurdity and irrelevance.
As an artist renowned for her wit and critique of capitalistic systems, KY delivers an engaging, no-holds-barred presentation—complete with take-home handouts—designed to equip attendees with unconventional insights into navigating the competitive art world. The session will conclude with an open-floor discussion, inviting spirited debate and diverse perspectives on the future of Hong Kong’s art market.
