Cafe OTO
30 March 2018 – 8.00pm
PS/Y’s Hysteria programme presents a multimedia fantasy on the experience of desire, shame and identification of the material queer body by artist Victoria Sin, featuring performance by Whiskey Chow and original soundtrack by Shy One. The performance will be followed by DJ set from Shy One.
A View From Elsewhere stages a series of narratives from personal to scientific, drawing on research into embodiment through lip syncing, the pathologization of queer behaviour in evolutionary theory, and a story of wilful self sacrifice in an attempt to join with an other. Structured in three acts, these narratives form a heavily constructed fantasy on the often-unsettling experience of the physical within the social body.
Lighting by Cecilia Barragan, Costumes by Ingrid Krafchenko and wig styling by Naomi Fuller.
Victoria Sin is an artist using speculative fiction within performance, moving image, writing, and print to interrupt normative processes of desire, identification, and objectification. This includes: Drag as a practice of purposeful embodiment questioning the reification and ascription of ideal images within technologies of representation and systems of looking; Science fiction as a practice of rewriting patriarchal and colonial narratives naturalized by scientific and historical discourses on states of sexed, gendered and raced bodies; Storytelling as a collective practice of centering marginalized experience, creating a multiplicity of social contexts to be immersed in and strive towards.
Shy One / Mali Larrington-Nelson has been working with music since 2003, when a youth club DJ course with scratch wizard DJ Blakey introduced her to mixing, after which she started collecting early Grime White Labels by artists such as Wiley, Target, Danny Weed, DaVinChe, Musical Mobb and Dizzee Rascal – and to DJ as part of a crew.
A year later she began to play with Fruityloops, and searching for her own sound Mali disguised herself using the face of a cartoon character and the name Shy One as she shared her music online. Shy One’s Decaffeinated Love EP was singed to Scratcha DVA’s label, and with her recent Waterfalls EP Shy One has found her individual sound and confidence as a musician.
Whiskey Chow is a London-based artist and Chinese drag king. Coming from an activist background in China, Whiskey has been engaging with political issues in her practice, Whiskey also explores female masculinity, stereotypes and cultural projections of Chinese/Asian identity. Studied at Royal College of Art (UK), Whiskey interdisciplinarily making performance, moving image and experimental sound piece.
Prior moved to the UK, Whiskey has worked closely with local queer communities in Guangzhou and contributed as actor, co-playwright and sound designer in the production of ‘For Vaginas’ Sake’ (2013) (將陰道獨白到底, the original Chinese version of The Vagina Monologues).
Image: Victoria Sin ft. Whiskey Chow and Shy One, A View From Elsewhere, 2018. Café OTO. Part of PS/Y’s Hysteria. Photo by Anne Tetzlaff