CREATIVE PROJECTS
HUTONG SHADOW BIKE TOUR
Mobile Shadow Performance on the Back of a Beijing Bicycle
Beijing, China 2011 & 2012
Shadow puppetry was born in China over two thousand years ago in the court of Emperor Han Wudi. After it's royal beginnings, shadow puppetry quickly became the people's art form. For two thousand years, traditional Chinese shadow puppetry has been passing down rural China's oral history through light and shadow. Sadly, after a century of political instability, regime change and modernization, the form seems to be on a terminal decline. Or is it?
This tour was part fun, part performance as research to assess to feasibility of a new shadow puppet audience in urban China. Indeed, the audience is there and hungry for more.
littleBIGworld
Miniature Model Puppet Performance with Live Video Feed
Artery 2010 at the Soap Factory
little BIG world is a small exploration of humanitys fascination with observing its animated self. An acknowledgement of both the small scale in which we live our lives and the larger collective we belong to. An installation of 1" scale landscape models of recognizable locale reenacted live and captured on live video feed.
The relationship of audience to performance is once removed through the medium of puppetry and twice through the medium of video. Scored softly by music, the audience may observe the film of the reenactment or the reenactment itself, which is the physical creation of something resembling themselves.
Video here.
AFTER SUNSET SHADOW SHOWS
Shadow Puppet Performance
On tour in the Minneapolis Parks 2010 and 2011
A free, family friendly show performed throughout the summer at numerous Minneapolis parks. Past years have included old fairy tale adaptations as well as new works for shadow theatre.
Our mission is to introduce a new audience to shadow puppetry as well as enlivening the outdoors at night.
PANDEMIC19
Co-director
Short documentary following three US doctors through the first wave of the COVID19 pandemic in 2020
PANDEMIC19 captures the story of three doctors in the United States fighting COVID-19 as the chaos of the pandemic permeates outside the frame of their video confessions. 28 min.
Awarded Special Jury Mention and the Audience Award at the Hot Springs International Film Festival.
ART AND TRADITION IN THE TIME OF UPRISINGS
Shadow accompaniment to Gabriel Levine's Book Launch of Art and Tradition in the Time of Uprisings (MIT Press)
May 2020
This shadow remix is a visual accompaniment to Gabriel Levine's book launch reading of his new book's introduction. Here, I wanted the shadows to support his thesis, not his literal text. The shadows are meant to let your mind steep more deeply in the narrative and consider the wider implications of how artists are reshaping the future, one vernacular practice at a time.
To view the MIT Press video, click here.
To view the full book launch performance, click here.
WE ARE IN THIS APART
Short Film during the COVID19 Pandemic Lockdown
Commissioned by the Thessaloniki International Film Festival
May 2020
We Are in this Apart is a short film that captures the deep loneliness we all feel while remaining in isolation, day after day after day. I, like you, am dreaming about the day when we will finally see each other again.
Directed by Yung Chang
Puppets, props, performance, by me.
To view the film click here.
To view the Asian Movie Pulse review click here.
To view the Weixin writeup click here.
SOON
Miniature Toilet Paper Crankie
For Great Small Works Virtual Toy Theatre Festival
April 2020
SOON is an original miniature toilet paper crankie performance that depicts my essentialized emotion during the pandemic lockdown of 2020.
To view the recorded performance click here.
FIREHORSE & SHADOW
Dance collaboration with Dreamwalker Dance
Commissioned by CanAsian
2019/2020
Capsule video here: https://nac-cna.ca/en/video/capsule-andrea-nann
Firehorse and Shadow explores family lineage with a focus on the dualistic yin and yang elements expressed within the bodies, lives and choices of three generations of women. Working against and alongside the hearsay of family stories and traditional Chinese charts of astrological animal signs, two performers weave together passages of remembering and forgetting that take the audience through an intimate telling of familial memory.
I join Dreamwalker Dance artistic director, Andrea Nann, as shadow artist and performer in this first chapter of a new body of work that collaboratively investigates what binds and holds family members together whether it be based on fact or fiction.
IMMATERIAL REMAINS
Ethnographic & Fine Arts Exhibition
The Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry
University of Connecticut, 2019/2020
As the practice of Chinese shadow puppetry languishes, the traditional shadow puppets are dying by the thousands: neglected to ruin, strung up, misunderstood or framed in permanent silence in the name of ‘preservation’. Soon, these static shadow bodies will be the only traces of the living form that remain.
With ghostly hung leather shadow figures from six regions, a tool wall, a material "touch" shelf, and an interactive video projected onto a traditional bamboo screen where visitors can try the puppets for themselves, Immaterial Remains hopes to create a ghostly impression of Chinese shadow puppetry's past and generate questions about its possible futures.
WE HAVE NEVER BEEN ORIGINAL
Original shadow puppet performance
In collaboration with Gabriel Levine and Bee Pallomina
Performed at Concrete Cabaret, @ Burdock Toronto 2018
As a researcher of an obscure ephemeral vernacular material performance form, it comes as a surprise to most that I love Justin Bieber and Top 40 hits. This short piece of experimental shadow puppetry is an answer to the critics who find these two interests antithetical. Indeed, they are not; both bring us closer to a present but invisible community and both bring us closer to the beauty of familiarity - for we have never been original.
Link to the full performance on youtube, here.
YELLOW IS FORBIDDEN
Documentary film by Pietra Brettkelly
Shadow story recreation interstitials collaboration, 2017
Pietra Brettkelly's new documentary about China's high-end fashion designer, Guopei, brings up questions of politics and culture, generational changes and globalization. Two short shadow interstitials were created to animate Guopei's origin story as a budding designer in Communist era China.
Premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival 2018
Link to trailer here.
Photo credit: Paul Litherland / Studio Lux © Galerie Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Concordia University
Photo credit: Paul Litherland / Studio Lux © Galerie Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Concordia University
Photo credit: Paul Litherland / Studio Lux © Galerie Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Concordia University
Photo credit: Paul Litherland / Studio Lux © Galerie Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Concordia University
IMMATERIAL REMAINS
Fine Arts Exhibition
@ Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery, Montreal 2017
As the practice of Chinese shadow puppetry languishes, the traditional shadow puppets are dying by the thousands: neglected to ruin, strung up, misunderstood or framed in permanent silence in the name of ‘preservation’. Soon, these static shadow bodies will be the only traces of the living form that remain. Immaterial Remains captures the vision of a ghostly Chinese shadow puppet future.
Each 'ghost box' features a lighting relay system that toggles between static front-lit scenes of empty objects and props with ghostly back-lit scenes that leave an impression of their inhabited past.
Video here.
BEFORE/GHOSTS/AFTER 前／鬼／后
Creation and Performance at the Lijiang Artists Residency @ Lijiang, Yunnan China 2016
At this one-month residency, I explored the incredible phenomenon of China's "ghost cities", which instead of having been abandoned and left unpopulated, had been built in overzealous expectation and never populated. These ghost cities, planned and built to house millions, remain empty, waiting. Using shadows on glass and projected into empty village homes, I animated what I hope will be Future Ghosts: a glimpse of who is to come.
THE ORIGIN OF SHADOWS
Chinese Shadow Puppetry Performance
@ Montreal Botanical Gardens, 2015, 2016
Commissioned by the Montreal Botanical Gardens as a culimnation of our interactive project this summer, this performance is a short shadow presentation geared towards a public audience. The fictional origin legend of Chinese shadow puppetry is recreated in brilliant colored leather shadows with bi-lingual English and French text and surrounded by the Botanical Garden's stunning Chinese garden during their annual lantern festival.
This performance was featured in my CBC Arts profile.
MINIATURE TRADITIONAL
CHINESE SHADOW PUPPETS
Installation
The Thorne Miniature Rooms @ The Art Institute of Chicago, 2014
I was recently commissioned to create a set of 1" scaled miniature traditional Chinese shadow puppets for display in their Thorne Miniature rooms at the Art Institute of Chicago. At first, I wasn't sure I was up to the mini-challenge. But, attempt after attempt proved too exciting to give up. I finally achieved fully-jointed leather-cut shadow puppets at around 1 1/2" high.
HANDS
Painted Shadow Performance
Montreal, QC, Canada @ Cafe Concret & the Phenomena Festival 2014,
St. Paul, MN @ The National Puppet Slam/Puppeteers of America National Festival 2017
Cognitive archeologists say our hand exceptionalism (independent movable fingers, sensitive fingertips, and opposable thumbs) has enabled our brain's development. The ability to physically 'grasp' has led to our mind's ability to 'grasp' new concepts and understanding about our world's materiality and along with it, our human everything.
This short manifesto about Hand Intelligence and the newer epidemic of Hand Regression is accompanied by a Hand Regenerating technique of live illustrative shadow painting to enliven the message.
Video here.
THERE'S NOTHING TO TELL 没有什么可说
Shadow Puppet Performance
Minneapolis, MN @ In the Heart of the Beast Theatre 2012, 2013
The story centers on a grandfather's autobiography as a shadow puppeteer in China's dynastic era through the Cultural Revolution. Along with his Chinese American granddaughter, the audience discovers Chinese shadow puppetrys sordid history, exquisite artistry and illuminating storytelling through her grandfather's reliving of his past.
This show is a culmination of my years of fieldwork in traditional Chinese shadow puppetry and directly reflects my training. The shadow puppets are all handcut out of leather hide and presented in traditional countryside style which means the audience can watch from a 360degree view.
Video here.
SHADOWS & REFLECTIONS
Presented at the University of Minnesota's Xperimental Theatre in spring, 2009.
A full length experimental new work for shadows, completely scored with live environmental soundscape.
The exploration of a puppets, and by relation, a human's journey from unconciousness to concious. Birth, growth, struggle, journey and ultimately death.