Full transcript:
Rebecca Liu: I think we met over Zoom about two months ago, and I had the pleasure of watching an early cut of the film before. It was already wonderful, but I went inside the space just now and there's nothing like seeing it projected on a very large screen and within the installation. I also love the smell of the bamboo. It's really wonderful. Please go if you haven't already. So I'd like to start our conversation today with a line that was in the description of this event and also in some of the materials about the exhibition that I thought really spoke to your work and what has interested you throughout your work so far. It's an observation about how the idea of the Chinese restaurant only occurs outside of China. Can you tell us a bit about what you mean by that?
Lap-See Lam: Hello, everyone. It's so nice to see you all. So I work in a holistic way or in a world-building universe. But the starting point is very much as you describe: the Chinese restaurant that only occurs outside of China, particularly in the western part of the world. For me, it all started from a personal need, looking into the very specifics of the spatial history of a particular Chinese restaurant that my grandmother founded in Stockholm in the '70s, which later was taken over by my parents. This is a place that me and my siblings basically grew up in — we grew up in the same building as the restaurant. So you can imagine that we spent a lot of time in between. I think what we also did was to, very early on, understand this performativity of Chineseness by spending time at this restaurant that was built around, I think, a Western perception of Chineseness. But also seeing people who work there, such as our parents and the others, and what they needed to be confined to, to be accepted, I think, in a predominantly white area.
I have to contextualise this: it is a Chinese restaurant with a menu and interior design that has been very much adapted to the Western gaze. That is what I mean with the Chinese restaurant outside of China. What happened, I think, was a pivotal moment for me, when my parents decided to sell this restaurant in 2014. At the time, I was a student at the Royal Institute of Art. I was not working with the themes that I work with today, but what happened was that I felt a personal need to document this place before it was sold to another person. I had this naive idea about an architectural laser scanner, which was available at the school. This is a long history, but I was not able to document our restaurant by that time. So I went on a mission to document similar ones, sometimes identical ones.
Rebecca Liu: These are Chinese restaurants in Stockholm and across Sweden?
Lap-See Lam: Exactly. I would bring my father to drive me around Sweden and I started to 3D scan many restaurants, creating an archive... and this was in 2014 and 2015, so this technology has developed so much since then. Today, you can 3D scan places with your mobile phone. But it was different a couple of years ago and the computer I was working with wasn't able to handle the files correctly. My initial idea was to create hyper-realistic renderings of these spaces. But the programme partly failed and partly created these glitches of areas where the scanner couldn't basically reach. When I saw this material, which was almost like a mesh, like a skin that is incomplete, I felt that the material was speaking to me in a way that I couldn't pre-plan. It spoke about this term, generational loss, an inherited history that cannot be transferred and so on. That was the starting point of the material that I've been continuing to work with.
Rebecca Liu: To pick up on that, generational loss is also a technical term for when you transfer one file to something else and things get lost. But you've taken it as a way to also explain the more figurative sense of loss that passes down through generations and I really love that idea. Bringing that to today and the film that we do see, the Dragonship Sea Palace, which is where the film takes place, represents a lot of the themes of cultural performance, cultural translation and mistranslation that you're interested in. Can you tell us a bit more about this ship and its significance to you?
Lap-See Lam: Sure. I was at a point in my process and projects where I had done a series of works with this 3D scanned material of Chinese restaurants. Then one day I was sitting in my studio. This is in Stockholm. I was still a student at the school. The school is situated on an island. Then opposite to this island, there is an amusement park. One day, I saw this gigantic ship in Chinese méi shí style on the other side of the water. I learned that the amusement park was renting this formerly dragon-shaped ship and turned it into an amusement park during Halloween. But what I was also learning was that it initially had a dragon's head and a tail attached to it, but not in its current state. This really piqued my interest. I've worked before with this idea of ghosts and spectrality through my previous material, but here it is so evident. It's a former dragon-shaped ship, removed from its head and tail and repurposed as a haunted house. After doing some research I learned that the original owner, Johan Wang, had bought over and created this ship with the idea of creating one of the first floating Chinese restaurants in Sweden.
It was originally built in Shanghai. It travelled all the way to Gothenburg in Sweden, which is a harbour city on the West Coast. But it failed as a restaurant business. He brought it to different port cities in Europe such as Cologne in Germany, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and Stockholm, but it just continued to fail. Then it was, I think, looted in Gothenburg, which was quite infamous at the time. It was then abandoned at some point, before it ended up as a haunted house 10 years later at the Amusement Park. I think this is quite a spectacular story of its failure but also as a mistranslation of the dragon. By the time the owner had signed over the contract to rent it, the amusement park had already created this Orientalist narrative around the dragon — something about a curse from the Orient, which had brought this ship all the way to Sweden. Then they made a trailer where they mistranslated the Chinese lóng, the dragon, into a sinister one. That is quite a big difference of how the lóng dragon is perceived in Chinese culture as a good force, as a protector of the water, of the ocean.
Because of this reason, the owner decided to remove the head and tail, thereby isolating it from the 'belly' to become a haunted house. This also interested me. This idea of the dragon and the mistranslation that happened when it travelled from the East to the West as a form of generational loss. My idea when I started to work with this was to therefore think of how to maybe resurrect this iconography and to create a new story that wasn't a failed one.
Rebecca Liu: And in the exhibition, we'll see an almost 30-minute long film in a really brilliant bamboo scaffolding structure. I know you've spoken about your work as a universe of sorts. Lots of them are interested in similar things, and I really enjoy how they reflect off each other. Also, part of that film was actually filmed at Venice, within the Venice Biennale installation. Can you tell us more about the process and ideas behind the works that are on view next door?
Lap-See Lam: I think I tried to explain it a little bit earlier that what I do is set my work within a world-building universe that has no real beginning or end. I pick up on different characters or ideas that I continue to construct and work with. Also, what I do is something that I call reverse script writing. I usually collect material, I collect stories, or I have something like a subject matter that I don't understand or that I want to develop. I usually create worlds and spaces, sometimes digitally, sometimes in the actual physical space where I'm about to exhibit. From there, I let stories grow. To go back to when I started working with the Dragonship for the first time, it was in a work called Dreamers' Quay (2022), which was a commission for Bonniers Konsthall. It is also significant, in terms of this idea of how important it is for me to let the material lead the process and the importance of not knowing what I'm doing.
In Dreamers' Quay I started to work with the dragon ship and I continued with this method of 3D scanning. Once again, my dad helped by bringing me to the yard where the ship was temporarily based, when it was not being used as a horror house. We 3D scanned the ship, both the interior and exterior, and also the isolated (gigantic) dragon's head and tail, which are the pieces that you can also see in Venice outside of the pavilion. I didn't have a clear idea of what to do with it. But I started working with it on a 3D programme, just to get a sense of the digital model of the ship, and to get a sense of the scale within the building of Bonniers Konsthall. Bonniers Konsthall is quite large, and it has one particular room, which is almost like a cube, like 15 by 16 metres with a very high ceiling. I placed this digital model in the digital space of Bonniers Konsthall and played around a little bit with it. What I did know was that I was not interested in reconstructing the ship there. But what happened was that I accidentally pressed on a button where the mesh became invisible, but it had light sources. This created a shadow of the ship within the space.
That, for me, felt interesting. Then I started researching about techniques of shadow play. I've always been a big fan of artists such as Kara Walker, William Kentridge, Lotte Reiniger, a pioneer of early shadow play animation. From there, I learned that actually the early shadow play techniques were brought from China to Europe through merchants and through sea travel. They have this French name, 'ombre Chinoises', which means Chinese shadows. To be able to connect the history of Gothenburg as a trade centre and as a harbour city, with a specific time period in the 17 and 1800s, where the Western demand for material culture from China in the form of Chinoises City was very present. Gothenburg had connections to the East India Company and brought all of these goods such as porcelain, silk, et cetera, on this route to Gothenburg and into the upper class and the royal families. I connected that with shadow play and then started to develop this process and a technique of a digital shadow play, that intertwines with the particular history of Chinoises City, through Chinese restaurants and through 'Afock', the first documented Chinese person in Sweden who got to meet the king and who travelled on one of these ships to Sweden. That is my process, which is really about not knowing, but then being able to connect it through different historical but also fictive narratives.
Rebecca Liu: Something we've spoken about before is this idea of connecting, in terms of the history, is that there is a personal and familial dimension to this work for you. For your family, like my family, and I would say many other second-generation immigrant families, the past is not something that is lingered over. It's always moving on: we've moved to a new part of the world, we're going to start anew. It seems like your work as an artist is a way of you finding a creative and imaginative way to look back at that history. I just wondered if you could say a few words on that?
Lap-See Lam: It was so great when we connected over this for the first interview. My family doesn't really talk about the past. I think the generations before me had to look forward, they couldn't really be nostalgic in order to thrive or in order to succeed in what they did. It is a way for me to bring out these stories. But I also think the way that I work between fiction and history is a way to mythologize the myth. Because I think as people of colour, we always tend to slide between fiction and reality in terms of how people perceive us. There's always elements of fiction. A way to, I think, deconstruct that or reclaim that is to, once again, deconstruct the fiction with fiction and to find other stories. That also connects to, I think, my way of reclaiming or finding other stories within this reality that we are in.
Rebecca Liu: What's it like sharing and showing this work? We've talked about the funny reactions you get from people in your parents' generation or people for whom this art has been really inspired. What's it like for them to see your work?
Lap-See Lam: It's difficult because my parents and my grandmother, for example, think that they don't understand contemporary art. They go into these spaces and into these rooms with a pre-conception of themselves that they don't understand. I can understand that, too. I mean, these are often very limiting spaces. But when they say that, I'm like, no, you are the ones who actually understand these works better than anyone else. Often, I say that you don't have to understand the work. My hope is that people feel the work rather than understanding every detail. It's really not about that with my work.
Rebecca Liu: I guess you started this work in 2014, so it's about 10 years now. You've approached so many different ways of looking at these questions. But I'm wondering, what does it feel like to have grappled with this material for 10 years? Have you changed your mind about anything? What have you learned?
Lap-See Lam: Yeah, it's been a long road. I learn things all the time by working like this. But I also learn by collaborating. It is a work that is in collaboration with many people, with composers, with performers that you see in the work who very much add to the stories and to the narration. It's a collaboration with a technical director I work with in my studio. It's a collaboration with my father, who's the narrator. That is really my source of inspiration and a way for me to learn through this material and to exchange ideas and to really expand this universe that I mentioned by working with others and other voices.
Rebecca Liu: Can you say a bit about the bamboo work as well, which is both in there and in Venice, and is just an incredible installation?
Lap-See Lam: The bamboo scaffold is both a reference to early Cantonese opera stages that were also a migratory way of showing Cantonese opera, but it's also a technique that's been used for a very long time in the Southern parts of China, such as Hong Kong. I wanted to create these temporary stages, and we went to Hong Kong for a research trip to meet with different bamboo sifus, bamboo masters, but ended up working with a very young person. His name is Ah-Yeung, who actually lived in the UK for a year or so, but has since moved back to Hong Kong. I brought him to Venice to create this bamboo scaffold scene, and also here and in Toronto, where the work is simultaneously being shown. We decided or understood quite early on that this is a non-translatable technique because he knows it through his body and the physical work he does when he climbs it and when he makes it. So it wouldn't be possible for us to translate it from a bamboo master to a technician without losing that authenticity, which I really wanted to maintain throughout the work. It's been fantastic to have him here. Everyone's been really fascinated just by watching him create the scaffold, which is a performance in itself.
Rebecca Liu: If you can remember, how long did it take to put together that structure that's next door?
Lap-See Lam: I mean, it took a fairly short amount of time. Four days, which wouldn't have been possible, I don't think, without him.
Rebecca Liu: It seems that you see collaboration as a really big part of your art making as well, because we've spoken about how your family members also get involved, uncles, aunts, and even in those early days, it was your dad and family driving you around Sweden?
Lap-See Lam: Yeah, definitely. I think maybe that's an unconscious way for me to also connect with them and to connect to these stories that I mentioned.
Rebecca Liu: Lap-See has already mentioned that her dad is a narrator of the film, and he's got a wonderful voice. Someone once said he was like a Cantonese, Morgan Freeman, and that seemed really wonderful. Without maybe spoiling too much, in this latest film, there is a bit of a moment, I'll say, with a ship. I'm trying to say it so you know what I mean, but maybe other people won't. A decision you made with a ship that was the first time you did it that maybe signalled that you were possibly trying to go for a new start. You've joked in the past that maybe this is when I stop thinking or working with Chinese restaurants. Where do you think you lie with that material now? Are you thinking of something new or are you thinking, I can keep on working with this material possibly forever?
Lap-See Lam: I don't know... That scene feels like some kind of change in my practice. I have no idea where I'm going with this material after this. So I don't know, to be honest.
Rebecca Liu: And that's totally okay... I think we can move on to questions now. Please ask any and all questions you might have.
Speaker 3: It was interesting hearing you talk about how your family felt about art or contemporary art. Through their involvement and participation in these projects, has their attitude or feelings about it changed? I guess I'm wondering what their experience or relationship to contemporary art is now, having been involved with you in creating stuff and seeing the process you've gone through?
Lap-See Lam: Yeah, I think very much so. I think for my father, for example, working with everything from assisting me, driving me around, to being one of the main characters of the opera that is currently being shown in Venice. Just being present, I think that is a way of breaking those insecurities and barriers. I try to bring them with me everywhere I go. I had the privilege of having my grandmother and my parents and an aunt here and my siblings. I think just having them in the physical spaces helps. But they continue to say that they don't understand. I think they understand more than what they are saying. I also say that I don't understand when I go to experience art. I think it's an instinct of being insecure, not feeling welcome. But there are different ways of trying to break those barriers.
Speaker 4: I'd like to pick up on something you said about not knowing early on during processes of being creative. These processes of not knowing and also moments of chance or intuition, which seems to appear in what you're describing. I wonder whether you could just talk a little about how that works for you and what that's like, the not knowing side of things?
Lap-See Lam: Yeah, I think it's hard. It's all about having time and having that very private space, which is my studio. That is so different from these situations or install periods or collaborations. I think for me, it's very important to create a physical space in my studio where I don't allow anyone else to be part of that. I don't allow people like my gallery to be part of that process, or curators to be part of that very precious moment. But for that, I need time. I need time to develop my work. I need time to walk maybe the wrong path to find those things that I didn't plan for. I think it's also very important with the subjects that I work with to not try to claim an entry point, or try to force the material to say something intentional, if that makes sense. I think by looking at the projects I've been doing, it's really, for me, the material that has led me into different questions. But it is difficult when I don't have enough time or space to do that because I want to learn. I want to learn from the material and I don't want to force the material to say something that is maybe preconceived.
Speaker 5: I remember from your exhibition in Venice that there are a series of garments with sea creatures all over them, and once the performers put on these garments, they transform into these creatures from various mythologies. For example, Lo Ting, this half-human, half-fish form that many local Hong Kong artists and cultural practitioners imagine as an ancestor of themselves, of Hong Kong people. I'm just wondering what role mythology is playing within your work?
Lap-See Lam: As a starting point, the costumes and the textile works you referred to, were beautifully made by an Iranian artist called Kholod Hawash, who is representing the Finnish part of the Nordic pavilion. She took on the task by looking into Mesopotamian culture, where they also have a half-fish and a half-man. For me, it was very important when expanding this idea of Lo Ting, that it didn't just have a local connotation to Hong Kong, but also connected to Lo Ting as a contemporary figure and also how this could be co-created by the performers like Ivan Cheng and Bruno, who play the Past and Future versions of Lo Ting. So mythology, in a way, is often the starting point of the works — specific mythologies. But then there's always this question of how to make that make sense for myself and the collaborators that I work with.
Speaker 6: I wanted to follow up on the idea of letting the materials take the lead and to let the story grow. I'm really interested in how you envision the process of the story growing and how language comes into play because the script writing in the film I found to be a really important part. Then the language of constructing a world, how does this communicate and translate into each other during the process?
Lap-See Lam: What you see in the film is a combination of scenes that were filmed for the video part in Venice, as well as newly filmed material in Venice for this edit, and then additional material. With this process, in terms of language and script writing, I created a basis of a script, constructing this sea journey that we go through and outlining the different characters. But then I invited people to co-write these characters with me. Ivan Cheng, for example, is a fantastic performer who plays Future Lo Ting, and he already has a way of dealing with language and performance in his own work. I really wanted to bring that into the co-creation of Lo Ting. I invited him to spend some time in Stockholm with me and together with the composer of the work in Venice. We just started writing, thinking and trying out different things with this character. His involvement in writing these parts became very important to how this character developed. Bruno Hibombo, who plays Past Lo Ting, I already worked with him for a work, another shadow play work called Tales of the Altersea (2023) that was made for Portikus, where he narrates Lo Ting, but Lo Ting through some other characters. This was a way for us to continue to develop this character, but with a language that was not based on words. His role is a bit more operatic in the film. Sofia Jernberg's part, she is an extraordinary experimental jazz musician who works a lot with improvisation. Her part was improvised in Venice. I think she was very influenced by my father and seeing him perform. She created this musical piece while we were filming in Venice. So a lot is non-scripted and just happening wherever the filming took place.
Speaker 3: Can I ask another question... I was really interested in this idea of the Chinese restaurant, the performativity of Chineseness. I'm just wondering what that does for younger generations who might not have a direct connection to Hong Kong or mainland China. I guess the question I'm trying to formulate is probably something around what does that performativity do to younger generations' relationship to the culture of their parents or their grandparents?
Lap-See Lam: That's a great question. In terms of what I mentioned before, I think we could see this as second generation, and as a second generation who are also privileged to choose what we want to do. I mean, that was very important for my parents to divide that space, to make us assured that the Chinese restaurant was only a station or a pathway towards something greater. I think that created a weird relationship for us as second generation, in the sense of both respecting and really understanding the Chinese restaurant as a very important place for us to…
Rebecca Liu: Move up in social class?
Lap-See Lam: Exactly. Move up in social class. But at the same time, we had to reject it. This duality towards this space, I think, is very much present in my work. I always work between those, not rejecting, but at the same time being critical of the space. But the question of, what does it do? I think it gives you maybe mobility in terms of understanding structure, understanding a place like this.
Rebecca Liu: I think to add to that as well, when we talked about how you went across Sweden and met these other restaurants, and it was actually quite easy for you because the Hong Kong Swedish community is quite small and your parents are well connected. There is a pattern in which the first generation sets up these restaurants as a place to economically survive. But the idea is that the second generation, their children, wouldn't be doing that. That was something that you observed when you were doing your travels. They were being sold off or they were closing down. And yes, as you say, it's a strange story of both this thing having a lot of meaning in some ways, but also the loss of that — this isn't the future, this isn't where this goes to next.
Lap-See Lam: Exactly.
Rebecca Liu: Okay. Any more questions?
Speaker 7: How did you move into art? Given your current background, what was your journey into becoming an artist?
Lap-See Lam: I was a very introverted child. I have three siblings, two older brothers, and a younger sister. They had other types of interests. I think drawing for me was a very natural way of expressing myself as a child. I have a funny story of how I came to understand that I was good at drawing. When we had art classes, one of my brothers asked me to do his homework. He asked me to make this homework for him, which was an illustrated book. Then he got the best grade. Then I was like, okay, I'm quite good at this. Then I just continued to draw a lot and paint. Then I became interested in sculpture a bit later on. But between that, I was working within fashion for a couple of years. Of course, I understood that you could work as an artist, but I didn't really understand how I was going to do that economically, financially, et cetera. I was like, okay, fashion is also creative, and I can do things within that. I worked with fashion for a couple of years until I understood I didn't want to do that. Then a friend of mine encouraged me to apply to art school instead. When I was accepted for the Royal Institute of Art, I emphasised the word 'Royal' for my parents. That is a tip. They were like, okay, Royal, that's something. And now we're here.
Rebecca Liu: It seems like we just talked about this when we met, but there's more funding for artists in Sweden, and that makes it easier on a day-to-day basis as well.
Lap-See Lam: Yeah, definitely. There is more governmental funding for artists in Sweden. So it's a great place for me to be based from.
Rebecca Liu: Okay. Any more questions or final thoughts?
Nicola Wright: I think we're down to our last minute or so. In which case, I'll just say from Studio Voltaire, thank you so much to Lap-See and to Rebecca for joining us today. As we said, if you haven't seen the film, please do take time to go and do so. But otherwise, thank you so much for a generous and very open conversation.
