When an alien meets a witch...

The word alien means foreign, overseas, non-native, external, distant, extraterrestrial, remote... The witch, in the way the word is usually used, means somebody, usually a woman, who uses her magical power to harm people. However, during recent decades, 'the witch' has also become a positive character, representing the empowerment of women and all minorities, challenging a society based on patriarchal values.

The performance, by Anka Lesniak, an intermedia artist and Ng Chor Guan, a composer and sound artist, was a sound-visual piece referring to the topics that the artists are working on: Anka's interest in ephemeral art and forgotten women's stories and Guan's futuristic visions of travelling in time and space and his attempt through art to connect people of different ethnic groups and nationalities.

The performance was an improvised sound-visual piece, in which the artists tried to react to each other’s actions. It was an attempt at a dialogue of two people coming from different traditions of performance art: Guan's experience in music frequently composed for dance, and theatre and Anka's approach, derived from the visual arts. During the performance, six large size drawings were created. They can be used as visual scores for further music pieces.

photo: Ewa Kaja