Telepresence in the Age of Extreme Self

For their seminar Scenography in the Present. Künstlerische Strategien für performative Raumentwürfe in Winter Semester 2022/23, Constanze Fischbeck and Ebba Fransén Waldhör invited artist Choy Ka Fai to give a research presentation and lead a workshop based on his performance Postcolonial Spirits (2020).

Following the presentation, Alejandra Janus, a student at HfG Karlsruhe and participant in the seminar, met with Choy Ka Fai. They discussed his long-term project Cosmic Wander (2020–2024), his research on shamanic practices and rituals, questions of approporiation or exoticisation, and the influence of digital hybridity on live performance.

This interview will also be featured in the upcoming publication Scenography in the Present, derived from the seminar of the same name.

Alejandra Janus: For your project Cosmic Wander (2020–2024) you have travelled to many countries, met shamans, and learned about their belief systems. You have documented and translated these experiences into works for a theater audience. How do you see your role as a mediator between what you have experienced to the viewer?

Choy Ka Fai: I know it’s a grammatically wrong title—Cosmic Wander—but I see myself as the wanderer. It’s reflecting the project well because I like to do what I call expeditions for different projects. They take over three or four years, and in that sense, I become the cosmic wanderer. It always starts with some sort of curiosity to find out more about things, and, in this case, Cosmic Wander really is this fascination about shamanic practices in Asia. That’s what drives me; it may seem quite methodological as a research process, but it’s not at all. It’s very intuitive. I do my research before going to a place, and different places call for different connections.

For example, in Siberia, I went through the academic route where I got in contact with people who know the museum director in Ulan-Ude, and that’s how I connected with the shamans and tried to reach out to them. In other places, I simply go and find them myself. I find them online, and I find it quite fascinating: These people all have Instagram and social media. Sometimes you just contact them on social media, and they will meet you.

When I do the research, I don’t really think about how I will create the work. First, there’s a lot of documentation, then I try to understand what I have documented in order to present what I have experienced. Thus, I’m presenting my own experience by expanding it into a different medium.

This was especially the case with Cosmic Wander, which abruptly ended when the pandemic started. For a lot of projects that were supposed to be live theatrical pieces, one had to find a different form of presentation. For example, the piece you saw in Dresden in Hellerau, Tragic Spirit (2022), about a Siberian shaman, went through two or three versions of the same content due to the pandemic. However, it was also interesting because for the first time, we couldn’t have an audience. So I built this virtual porter museum where everything became digital. I learned new terms like digital architecture and got a digital architect to build the space for me according to the research material. I was already working with motion capture, so the dance could well be translated digitally. Strangely, the Blue Sky Academy (2022) or Tragic Spirit started by creating this virtual porter to the world of Siberian shamans.

Nevertheless, I was glad that—after two years—I could create a theatrical piece.

The piece essentially deals with the same research and choreographic ideas, but in a stage context. The different senses became very important. The work in progress was first created in Taipei with a dancer. Normally, the creation part for me is super quick, with the structure and dramaturgy of the piece coming into place in a week. Then, over one to two years of multiple showings, it becomes more refined and detailed, taking into account the context of where the piece is shown and how it speaks to the audience. Sometimes I return to the space; I return to the city. For example, in Singapore, I couldn’t show most of these works because it’s quite troublesome to get permission. I mean, there’s nothing controversial about what I'm doing, but in the context of Singapore, they are quite sensitive about certain images, e.g. a shaman with blood. It’s too troublesome for me to go through that, that’s why I choose to be in Germany.

Tragic spirit was actually one of my favorite pieces of this five different shamanic communities that I researched on. When you see the piece in VR or on the screen, it looks two-dimensional. In the theater space, however, everything has different layers, even the composition of the sound artists that I worked with. You couldn’t have experienced that by looking into VR goggles. I was very happy about that. There’s something I call the immediacy of the live performance, when you can sense the breath of the dancer, that sort of kinesthetic empathy, the exchange of energy. That’s why I will never leave the theater. 

AJ: When visiting another culture, documenting and interpreting their customs can lead to cultural appropriation. How do you avoid creating colonial moments of exoticisation and extraction? For example, when you work with indigenous shamans, how do you prevent placing their tribe and sacred rituals into unwanted context?

CKF: This is a very complex question. I get this question about cultural appropriation a lot from the audience. But often, this accusation, this perspective, comes from a position of not understanding their own culture. To say that I’m an outsider who is appropriating their culture. One simple example is my experience in Taiwan, where I created the piece with Taiwanese shamans. To me, the Taiwanese shamans themselves are more outrageous than whatever I've shown on stage, but they don’t perform in public spaces. An audience that may not know the heritage and depth of whatever contemporary shamans are doing might feel that this is offending their culture. Yet, I wouldn’t imagine something that is different from what shamans are already doing. Especially in the shamanic cultures I re- search, many shamans are much more progressive in their ideology and practice than many people think.

Many things are not as sacred as people imagine, even in Indonesia, where you see shamans wearing traditional costumes and singing in Javi, an ancient language. I discovered that myself when I was trying to translate the songs to English. It doesn’t make sense. It’s everyday mending stuff, it’s political banter, and it’s okay to improvise in this. Traditional folk cultures continuously evolve, with everyday life staying relevant to their contemporary society. From the outside or from a position of not knowing, it may seem like cultural appropriation. However, I treat anyone I work with, including shamans, with respect. I communicate with them, for example, by doing interviews. Having collected their practice and data, I ask questions in order to verify whether my own interpretations of what they are doing is outrageous or not. Other times I would go back to them and live with them from time to time. Over a period of time, you develop a basic understanding of who they are and what they do.

AJ: In your work Postcolonial Spirits (2020), inspired by the Indonesian folk dance Dolalak, you opened a multi-dimensional space. You had a team in Berlin and in Singapore, and with digital technology, you brought together the Dutch dancer Vincent Riebeek and the Dolalak dancer Andri Kuniawand. Why was it important to you to bring these two individuals together in a digital space? Why was it live-streamed instead of being pre-recorded?

CKF: I think Postcolonial Spirits is one of my most beautiful failures in creating a live performance because it was driven by the circumstance of the pandemic. In February 2020, I was in Indonesia to film the folk dancer Andri and the ritual of Dolalak, and from then onwards, I couldn’t go back. But I already knew that I wanted to work with a Dutch dancer because Dolalak is inspired by colonial Dutch soldiers drinking and partying. It’s a very strange, hybrid mix of a Javanese dance formed from their tradition, but they dress up like Dutch colonial soldiers and sing Muslim poetry. That’s because they went from Javanese Hinduism and Buddhism and evolved into a Muslim country.

Even though it was important to gather these people, it was actually naive of me to say that I want to teach the Dolalak dance to a Dutch person. Like completing a cycle back because that’s what the Dutch gave to the Indonesians. But of course, in between, there are so many more layers. When I started working, I discovered by chance that a lot of Dutch people still have many connections to Indonesia. I learned that Vincent’s grandparents met in Indonesia, and his mother was born in Indonesia. His grandfather just wanted to escape the Second World War in Europe, so he went there, worked for a company, and served in the military. This story represents many stories of Vincent’s generation, but maybe the next generations will have less and less connections. I tend to say the work is guided by whichever spirit wants me to make the work.

Because of the pandemic, Vincent had to learn the dance via Zoom from the folk dancer. And for two years, they never touched each other’s hands; they never touched their bodies. But how do you learn, dance? You have to be physically involved. I say it’s the most beautiful failure because somehow I know that it may not work as a live piece. All these challenges that you encounter through trying to perform through telepresence became so interesting to me, and, of course, there are many more layers to the story. In the performance, we started with live-streaming, so it was also a reflection of the pandemic time when everyone was going digital, especially in the arts. But what I envisioned was something beyond just a 2D-transmission of a video conference call on Zoom. I wanted to live-stream the motion capture data from the dancer in Indonesia. They perform as a sort of supernatural union on stage. Part of the show was a choreographed dance, the repertoire of Dolalak, but there are also parts when the dancer went into trance. That means the Dolalak spirits entered the dancer. I had this fascination: If I could motion capture the dancer who is possessed by the spirit, I could also capture the essence of the spirit. And it would be transmitted through ones and zeroes via a rented server on Amazon or Google, from a computer in Indonesia to the stage in Berlin (we performed at HAU on this huge, nice stage). The dance was compressed and expanded like a living avatar or the presence of an avatar to have an impossible duet with the dancer on stage. At that point it became clear that we couldn’t create the correct notation of Dolalak for Vincent, because he could only see it digitally. And then it became clear that it was about the atmosphere and presenting the spirit of Dolalak. The show is called “Post-colonial Spirits,” because the Dutch spirits or the postcolonial spirits of the Indonesian linger in this dance, forever, through their ongoing practice. In the beginning and at the end of the show, I touch upon the fact that today Dolalak is practiced on social media spaces like TikTok. Because of the pandemic, it wasn’t possible to have gatherings in villages. So they took on TikTok, starting from 2020, and they became famous, with almost 2 million followers. That piece is actually the most complex show I have ever done because I worked with two groups of people, one in Berlin and one in Indonesia. Everything was duplicated. I had a sound engineer in Berlin, and I had a sound engineer in Indonesia, handling a time difference of five or six hours.

Making this show also spoke of capitalism, about the art market where those with money had the privilege of watching the show at the right time, whereas the Indonesians I commissioned had to work until 2 a.m. That’s a different story though. Well, I had two sets of people working together, and it was complicated. I had three screens going up and down on the fly bar, like three frames. This correlates to the dramaturgy of the show, bringing together three: the Indonesian, the Dutch, and the now. The communication system for the stage manager was ridiculous. There were three systems, so the stage manager in Berlin had to control the technician, the video, the sound, and the stagehand to move the screen. She also had to talk to the stage manager in Indonesia, who spoke Bahasa, the In- donesian national language. In Berlin, we spoke English and German. We had a Discord channel for emergencies and checking-in. 

After two years, we were invited back to Indonesia. The first time the two groups of artists met was on an outdoor stage in front of the world’s largest Buddhist temple, Borobudur. I invited a TikTok ghost that came with twelve dancers and twelve musicians. We collaborated at an art festival in Indonesia. That was a really strange experience because it felt like the two dancers, who had a long-distance relationship for two years, finally met and danced together. It felt closer to us, more human in a way. When we made the premiere in Berlin in August 2021, we fell back to the conceptual, the intellectual. When I ask myself why I make a live performance, it’s because of the humanness. The human condition can only be experienced through looking at and interacting with another human. So when someone becomes a digital presence, it’s a very different feeling, which was nice in that specific context at the moment of the pandemic.

AJ: What is the importance to you of creating simultaneous hybrid spaces that not only transcend national borders but also time, gender and death?

CKF: When I made Postcolonial Spirits, I was the first to transfer teleported mo- tion capture data from one place to another. I felt quite proud, but then I realised nobody cares about it. When I look back into history, of course Merce Cunningham and Nam June Paik did this satellite performance, but that was in 2D. It’s a satellite streaming of video data. I asked myself why nobody cares about it. It’s because it doesn’t matter how complex this hybrid space is. In the end, what matters most is what story you tell on stage, what experience you get from seeing life, seeing art—not just performance art but also visual art.

When I worked on Cosmic Wander, I learned about all the practices of Vietnamese shamans that, since the 1970s, went to California because of the war. They settled on the West Coast where they still practiced the spirit procession. In a scholar’s research I’ve read that when the performer or the shaman dance and asked the spirit to possess him, it feels like Vietnam is dancing inside of him. So in a way, the God or the spirit from a specific village in the Mekong River Delta becomes transnational. And the spirit was now in California, in a temple in Santa Monica, for example. I was interested in the idea that this folk religion becomes a religion of the diaspora.

What is a homeland, or what is home to you? The spirit possession practice becomes transnational because the spirit still speaks, consults, and helps the Vietnamese diaspora in California. 

AJ: Typically, in film and theater production, processes such as the costuming of dancers or the work of the technical team are done behind the scenes to create an illusion. In your performance Tragic Spirit at Hellerau, I noticed that all these processes happen in front of the audience and are part of the stage design. You even stand on the stage yourself and discuss the development of the process. What meaning do you give to this kind of transparency in your work? 

CKF: I always believe the process is more interesting than the outcome. I’ve worked in theater from the very beginning of my practice. I started in theater, where what you put on stage is always the finished product. However, I enjoy the research process so much. In a lot of my pieces, in the early stages of my practice, I somehow performed the rehearsal because I felt that it was more interesting and true. I’m thinking of one project called Soft Machine (2012-2016). Before this project, I was still learning, taking ideas and trying to copy famous artists and how they presented their work. What’s the dramaturgy? What’s the media? What’s the language they use? I think in Soft Machine, I finally found my own language. It was a four-part show with four different choreographers, a sort of biographic performance. I tried to perform the process, the discussions, the learning or the unlearning. 

Imagine if all the technology in Tragic Spirit is hidden. If everything is hidden, you will wonder: What is this illusion? Being very transparent is actually a form of dramaturgy. It takes away the questioning of the illusion and it allows the audience to focus on what is important. They focus on the narration, they focus on the moment of the dance. So in a way, I play with layers, the idea of difference and repetition, but I also remove and add layers to point the audience to the narration, to the way that I want them to experience the piece and stop questioning certain things which I feel are less important. Sometimes I think immersive technology can be overwhelming. You would always focus on the fantastic digital space, the technological work. You are just fascinated by the magic of technology. I’m interested in using technology to tell the magic of the story rather than the magic of the technology itself. I like to say that I’m actually a very analogue person. Sometimes I reduce the technology to the bare essentials as a tool to tell the story.

AJ: You work with dancers, digital media, live music, and sometimes even incense. Rituals are usually an interactive moment with a group. What role does the audience play in your work? What do you want the audience to experience?

CKF: I would say that if you replace the word “ritual” with “theater” in your question, you could have the same answer.

AJ: Is it the same for you, theater and a ritual?

CKF: It could be, especially in this series of work. A ritual or a theater is a commune of people coming together because of a certain motivation, a certain reason. The reason why I use the incense or create that sort of atmosphere in Cosmic Wander is to try to create what I experienced quite literally. When I was allowed into their commune, in their space, with my camera, documenting and interacting with them. I wanted my audience to experience what I experienced. In a way, incense is the most immediate way. I am not so sensitive about incense myself, but, after working four years on this project, I can tell there’s a difference between the incense used in India, in Singapore or in Vietnam. At least for me, an incense gives some of the connection back to the site where I encountered the spirit or the ritual. I try to stay close to the original experience I had, especially regarding the incense. If it’s an Indonesian show, it has to be this incense.As I work, I realise I come back to the question of appropriation more and more. What is the point, for example, of bringing a ritual from the Amazon in America to the white cube of a museum? The theater is an environment where I have more control to recreate the atmosphere making use of all these different senses. I’m constantly questioning myself, like, why do I do this? Why does the audience need to do this? I don’t know if it’s appropriate to share this, but when one of the pieces, Yishun is Burning (2021), was shown within a German dance platform, it felt like the academics and critics who saw it still thought it was exotic. Like going on a tour in tropical Asia. I think what I am trying to do is—how to say this?—it’s a translation of vernacular culture. For example, in the documentary of that piece, I re-edited the subtitles over the period of a year. This is where language comes into play: How do you assess the information of the ritual or the knowledge? How do I speak to the audience here and now? I know that when I perform in Singapore, I can just use the literal translation. In both the ritual and theater, you allow people to join you. If you don’t, then what’s the point of coming together?

AJ: You mentioned in an interview that the more advanced the technology, the more people want to return to traditional wisdom and belief systems. How do you see your own work in relation to this?

CKF: When there is a new motion capture technology, after three years, it’s updated with another motion capture system, and sometimes it loses something. For example, this is the third generation of motion capture I’m using. The first generation gave me the possibility to move ten fingers. And then they realised that you don’t need the fingers for gaming, for digital productions. In traditional Asian dance forms, however, the fingers are most important. They reduced from 20 to three sensors and used AI to anticipate the movements of the fingers. Just by losing the fingers, you lose the resolution of dance. It’s very difficult when the technology becomes more and more advanced. I hate to say this, but the capitalists are those who decide what the future is, based on what’s profitable. I cannot use the new system for the motion capture of heritage dance because it doesn’t make sense anymore. Sometimes, when I struggle, I wish I would just go back to my body and my speech on stage, give a lecture or perform a solo theater piece without any technology. I guess that’s the same for every artist: You struggle with the medium and with your material.

AJ: Rituals are done to heal the soul and the body of humans. In which context do you see your artistic work in light of this idea?

CKF: I think you can replace the word “ritual” with “art” as well. Art can be more healing than rituals. At this moment in time, I think rituals may not necessarily be a way of healing but an attempt to create a connection to something that every individual is searching or yearning for within their own individual context. For me, art has more potential than a ritual. That’s why I’m still an artist. When I had a show two weeks ago, I gave an introduction saying: If you are spiritually sensitive, please stay away from the stage, because I am not a trained Shaman. I cannot protect you. I cannot help you because my day job is being an artist, and my ability is truly art.

AJ: When you make your performances, do you invite the spirits before you start?

CKF: I do, especially in this series, in whichever context. I have to go back to this quote from a novel that I’ve read in Taiwan. It says that “Gods and ghosts exist because hu- mans need them.” You are searching for them, that’s why they talk to you. For this series, in whatever work I do that involves their presence, I make the ritual, I invite them to join the space, or I ask them to protect us.

AJ: Thinking about your early work with the sensors and the electrical stimulation of body parts, I wonder how you arrived to work on spiritual shamans?

CKF: The work is called Prospectus For a Future Body (2010–2012). One of the main pieces in that work that deals with dance is called the Eternal Summer Storm (2010), which is trying to relive Tasumi Hijikata’s famous A Summer Storm (1973). The concept is to experience dance through electrical nerve stimulation, thus to feel the dance instead of just looking at it. It comes down to pushing the limit and sometimes asking very stupid, naive questions: How do we archive dance? Do audiovisual archives make sense? Or instead, can we sense the vibration from the electric stimulation on our muscles, from the choreographer? If you motion capture William Forsythe, for example, and he dances iconic and notated pieces. Would you relive his dance through putting sensors on your body and feel how he dances, rather than just watching him? That was the proposition of that piece. 

On the other side, also the shaman goes into trance through vibrations. It’s a vibration that allows you to enter into a heightened state of consciousness, scientifically speaking.That vibration of the body can be found in almost all ritualistic folk practices and dances. I’m very fascinated by this idea of trance and the human body. If you imagine it in a molecular way, how the muscle contracts, that’s also a form of vibration, and how the whole body vibrates until it stops.

So, that’s my own journey—I haven’t used “journey” in the whole interview, but I use “journey” when I work in the theater a lot. There are many failed attempts when I try to quantify the human body. I guess that’s what I reflected on in the 10 or 15 years of practice: I use science and technology to quantify the body, to ask questions. And more often than not, science and technology misunderstand the body. That continual process of trial and error led me to search for the invisible, the shamanic, the spiritual. That doesn’t necessarily mean that I have become a shamanic artist. In my new piece, I’m working with an Unreal game engine, and I’m trying to create meta humans to perform with or without the human presence. I always go back and forth, trying to expand the human presence. How do you expand the human body with technology, with speech, with a presence that you cannot explain? When a dancer is standing on stage, how do you project your presence into that space?