Fernanda D'Agostino, Felicia Lowe, Miche Wong and Knxout, bring together their diverse skills in video installation/experimental media, documentary filmmaking, dance/choreography, and sonic arts to create a monumentally scaled video installation, immersing visitors in a dreamscape of Chinatown past, present and future. Additional performances by Judy Chan, Lisa and Juju Kusanagi, Chan Moly Sam, Mariko Ohno, and Beverly Wong.
Movement, Memory, Mirage investigates how culture threads its way across generations and continents, resonating in our subconscious experience of the current moment. Using dance, movement practices and ritual as a constant within an ever shifting stream of consciousness, Movement, Memory, Mirage takes us from traditional practices and shadowy memories of the ancestors, to the cutting edge expressions of the current generation. The themes and questions explored in the work include the complex "American" identity and its inherent contradictions and dualities, multilayered histories that are embedded within cultural landscapes, the folding and unfolding of experiences, and the ways in which culture carries, shifts, and expands on specific narratives and legacies towards future generations.
Historic footage is interwoven into the project such as Seeing America's Greatest Chinatown (1912), China and the Chinese (1917), Golden Gate City (1938), Chinese, Korean, and Japanese Dance (1965), Chinatown by Neon (Prelinger Archives-undated), as well as home movies from the archives of CAAM. These images are layered with contemporary footage drawn from Felicia Lowe's Shirley's Hope Chest featuring Miche Wong, Fernanda D'Agostino's Celestial Navigations, and from original performances recorded live via SKYPE NDI interface with Wong in D'Agostino's Liminal Performance Space