Soft opening: 17:00-19:00, Friday, June 28, 2024
Artist Talk on CosmicWonder, Supernatural Dance Exploration and Future Body: 15:00, Sunday, June 30, 2024

Existing on the margins of societies, many shamanic communities in Asia today often take up forms of resistance against colonization and cultural homogeneity, according to Choy Ka Fai—a Singapore-born, Berlin-based multimedia artist a.k.a. the supernatural dance explorer. Choy spent 18 months from 2018 traveling through Central Asia and Southeast Asia, interviewing more than 50 local shamans for a project series called CosmicWander, which he later developed into a series of videos, dances, and installations. One such group he focused on is the Buryat people, who have been forced to nomadic conditions across borders mainly in Siberia, as well as various parts of Russia, Mongolia, northeastern China, and Central Asia.

The Buryats were originally a Mongolian-speaking group that wandered around Northeast Asia. In the early 20th century, some Buryats, escaping the chaos caused by the Russian Revolution, sought refuge in Outer Mongolia (present-day Mongolia). In the late 1930s, they were executed for being counter-revolutionaries and Japanese spies as a result of the Stalinist purges. After World War II, surviving Mongolian Buryats were recognized as an ethnic minority in the Mongolian state, while those who remained on the Russian side were institutionalized as a distinct minority under the Soviet Union, treated as inferior to Mongolian Buryats. Shamanism was also a target of oppression under communist regimes in the USSR and China. Shamanism, the belief in an eternal blue sky, has proliferated among the Buryat people, a diaspora without a nation-state, as they seek to rebuild a sense of belonging that has been shattered throughout the 20th century and address the grief of having been suppressed in various places across time and borders.

The solo exhibition of Choy Ka Fai at ASAKUSA, In Search of the Tragic Spirits, is a multimedia installation inspired by the Buryat shaman community. Visitors are invited to experience a fictional shamanic academy called Blue Sky Academy, where they can learn about Siberian shamanism through interviews with academy members and Buryat shamans. Constellation of the Flesh offers visitors an exceptional experience of a trans-natural world through a headset, where trance vibrations and virtual realities are synergized by the digital presence of a Siberian shaman. While shamans enter a state of altered consciousness, or trance, connecting with transcendent beings and summoning transhuman entities and ancestral spirits into their bodies, Choy Ka Fai utilizes digital technology to connect the dispersed memories, cultural adaptations and stories of these lands.

The imaginary communities emerging through the Internet also have the potential to reinstate old belief systems that were considered unscientific and irrational. Beyond the grasp of modern scientific and nation-state ideologies, these beliefs, fervently embraced or blindly followed, may be secretly coming back to life in the digital realm—a potential space for the invisible and the supernatural beings. The de-nationalized states of the modern Buryat shaman communities, which have survived on the frontier, not only awaken the souls and spirits of the past but also present a vision for the future.

CosmicWander
CosmicWander is an on-going project exploring shamanic dance culture in Asia. In search of the supernatural dancing experience, Choy Ka Fai first set out on an 18-month journey across Asia in 2018 to meet more than 50 spirit mediums in Siberia, Taiwan, Vietnam, Singapore and Indonesia. Through his journey, Choy filmed extraordinary shamanic rituals and folk traditions that are still prevalent in our contemporary times, intersecting with the broader environmental, technological and political shifts in Asia. Returning with encounters in altered states of human consciousness, Choy transforms these experiences on stage, posing hypothetical questions about alternate ways of knowing and living as well as possible realities beyond our own. The CosmicWander project evolves into a series of performances, installations and virtual portals that strive to resurface the alternative and disappearing human culture on dance, trance, and belief systems.
CosmicWander is was created with support from tanzhaus nrw Dusseldorf, Taipei Performing Arts Center, Singapore Art Museum, National Arts Council, Singapore, Slovak Arts Council, Kunststiftung NRW Germany, Moving Digits/ MIREVI Lab Dussendolf, Nationales Performance Netz/ Joint Adventures
www.ka5.digital/projects/cosmic-wander


Choy Ka Fai (b.1979)
Choy Ka Fai is a Singapore-born, Berlin-based multimedia artist a.k.a. the “supernatural dance explorer.” Through field research, quasi-scientific experiments, and documentary performances, he appropriates the latest digital technologies and indigenous narratives to imagine the human body of the future. He has created many works that cross the realms of visual art, dance, and theater. Major projects include “Soft Machine” (2012-2016), in which he visited 13 cities in five Asian countries to interview contemporary dance makers; “UnBearable Darkness of Being” (2018-2020); and the “CosmicWander” series (2019-2024), which explores the physical and spiritual worlds of Asian shamanism. While working in the performing arts field at Sadler's Wells Theatre, London; ImPulsTanz Festival, Vienna; and Kyoto Experiment, he has expanded his activities into the field of visual arts, including solo exhibitions at the National Museum of Singapore and KINDL in Berlin (2021), as well as group exhibitions at the Biennale of Sydney and Bundeskunsthalle (2024).
He graduated from the LaSalle College of the Arts in Singapore in 2004 and received his MFA in Design Interaction from the Royal College of Art in London in 2011.