interdisciplinary
A Language of Limbs
2022
Experimental Short. 5 min.
Co-Directors: Wy Joung Kou & Jody Chan
Created with support from TQFF's DIY Film Lab, 2021
A Language of Limbs is an experimental stop-motion short film mapping the etiology of hysteria against lineages of crip kinship and hard-earned resilience. A set of ceramic objects; a pair of rescue inhalers; a handful of ginger candies; a nerve of red yarn. Everyday objects come together in an insistent choreography to illustrate the realities of sickness and care, past and present. Drawing on poetry, historical research, and personal experience navigating the medical system as chronically ill, neurodivergent, and disabled people, A Language of Limbs argues that our bodies are not blank pages, or sites of diagnosis, but maps toward queer desire and agency.
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Image description: still image from A Language of Limbs. Depicted are two burnt matchsticks forming an X, sitting in the center of a 3D model of a pelvis.
The Mermaid Project
2021
Interdisciplinary Theatre
Facilitated by: Ximena Huizi
Co-creators: Wy Joung Kou, Akiva Blaine, Aria Evans, Kristine White, Ximena Huizi, Jody Chan
With support from: ReDefine Arts' Inkling Festival, and the Ontario Arts Council Recommender Grant for Theatre Creators through Aluna theatre.
"A group of artists meet at the intersection of their disciplines to dig their hands, bodies, and voices into the waters of the mermaid archetype. In the wake of a climate crisis future where the sacred rock that houses our limited human bodies promises to be ravaged by fire and water, we set out to imagine how we can become merpeople. We look at the myths, at our bodies, at our relationships to power and access... We remember our experiences of water - what we love and fear about it. We investigate the creation of a ritual to activate an emergency evolutionary pattern so we may begin to mutate into beings that can exist past the destruction of the human reign. We call forth the mermaid."
Recent presentation: Live creation process - Caminos Festival, 2021. Link to recorded livestream here.
Image description: a digital collage by co-creator Aria Evans features five simple drawings of a long haired person in movement, wearing only underwear and shoes. Each iteration of the person is posed differently (crouching, kneeling, bending) and has collaged materials on top of varying parts of the body. These bodies are set against a lightly faded background image of ice and rushing water, overlaid with illustrated speckles and bubbles.