The artists of Art Basel x Tai Kwun Artists' Night on their craft

Tai Kwun’s historic Prison Yard came alive with Artists’ Night on March 28, which featured a mesmerising blend of visual art, experimental music and cutting-edge technology. Hill Choi Lee speaks to the artists behind the performances

Lawrence Lek

Your digital environments are incredibly immersive. What inspires you to create these alternate realities, and how do you hope audiences will interact with them?

I’ve always thought of the city as a kind of living simulation, constantly shifting depending on the time of day, your mood, or the new structures that appear. Growing up in Singapore and Hong Kong, the sense of constant transformation was everywhere. I was also immersed in games and films where alternate realities blended seamlessly with everyday life. In my own work, I try to recreate that atmosphere, making a space where fiction and memory merge, and where each player or viewer constructs their own path through a world that isn’t fixed, but always evolving.

How do you see Sinofuturism reflecting or challenging the cultural and technological advancements in Hong Kong?

Sinofuturism began as a speculative lens on Chinese technological development, but it’s also a mirror for the post-colonial condition in places like Hong Kong and Singapore. It caught between nostalgia for what was, and uncertainty about what’s coming. Hong Kong’s transformations and its tensions between identity, governance, and progress are part of this broader question: what happens when the forces driving technological acceleration meet the unresolved legacies of history?

You started in architecture before transitioning to art. How does your architectural background influence your creative process, especially in crafting immersive experiences?

Architecture taught me to think about narrative as something spatial, something that unfolds through movement. I often approach films or installations like buildings or cities, designing them as worlds to explore rather than stories to consume passively. My projects usually begin with a location, then I let the characters and conflicts emerge. That’s been the same from the earliest games I made to my more recent simulations and films.

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Your work explores the emotional side of AI. Can you tell us more about what drew you to this intersection of technology and emotion?

I asked myself: what if an AI wasn’t just intelligent, but self-aware? When I write AI characters, I imagine what I would feel in their position. They have a mix of hope, uncertainty, and longing for connection. In a way, they’re avatars of the Sinofuturist condition: full of promise but isolated, designed to succeed but unsure of their purpose. By giving AIs an interior landscape, the work becomes less about the future of machines and more about the emotional contradictions of the present.

What aspects of Hong Kong's vibrant culture and urban landscape will you incorporate into your performance, and how will they shape the narrative of your art?

The Hong Kong I grew up in was always in transition. I left in 1989, so my memories are filled with mirrored towers, flyovers, and shopping malls, places that feel temporary but stay in your memories. These so-called "non-places" are full of meaning for me. The performance is set in a fictional smart city, and draws from that atmosphere, combining personal memory with architectural fragments to create a cityscape that feels familiar and uncanny at once. 

affect lab

Your studio focuses on "lesser-heard stories." How do you choose which narratives to amplify, and what impact have you seen from bringing these stories to light?

affect lab usually chooses lesser heard stories that relate to things that are happening in society at the time. So if we notice big shifts in the way people are connecting with one another, or the way people are living together, or are struggling to deal with, then often this forms an inspiration for us to go deeper into a subject. So for example, we see a rise in homelessness in our home city of Amsterdam and we are interested  to look at how we can design a storytelling project around that theme.  In the second part of this work we look at what impact we see from these stories.  And often, for example, in our project, Bloody Beautiful, we see incredible stories around menstruation and menopause. We open space for people to share those stories without shame. Without taboo. And this creates a shift in how people share stories, but also how they bear witness to one another. And with this, we really notice how people start talking more freely about subjects - about health, or subjects like reproductive rights for women. This makes a big difference to the kind of public discourse that exists, the public conversations that happen in our city, but also elsewhere around the subject of women's health for example.

You critically reflect on technology's role in community-making. Can you share an example of how digital tools have unexpectedly shaped social connections in your projects?

We often use technology in our projects, a great example is a project called “How to Tell a Herstory”, where we built a bespoke AI tool that invited women to upload a photo from their family photo album; and then through machine learning processes they were able to craft a story. Participants wrote the story with some of their own input, but also with the input of the AI. So it was a kind of co-authorship between a tool that we made and the women. This created a lot of interesting connections between memory and photography, but also between other people in the group. So this was a community-based project. It took place at a community centre in the Netherlands, in a city called Utrecht. It was very interesting to see how the technology itself helped spark those social connections and those stories. 

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affect lab collaborates with an international artistic network. How does this global perspective influence your creative process and the stories you tell?

affect lab often collaborates with international artists. We work on projects globally around the world. This can range from South Africa to Hong Kong and Japan. This global perspective or influence on our creative process is extremely important to us. We think in very feminist ways, that means we're very passionate about a more plural perspective about including other cultural influences and about including other opinions and differences that could help enrich and nourish the work and this also makes for better storytelling. 

Your work often involves immersive storytelling. What's the most challenging aspect of creating these environments, and how do you measure their effectiveness?

We love immersive storytelling – by this we mean environments that can, in a sensory way, take people on a journey, and often this can be quite challenging. For example, we recently did a project in South Africa about grief and how people mourn the loss of a loved one. For this we made a musical called Requiem for the Impossible. This was a highly immersive experience. People came into a theatre and they would use their phones to contribute sounds and listen to the story of the Requiem – to participate in a kind of musical journey.  When participants have an experience like this, they got quite emotional. So, we see the challenge in this kind of environment is also to hold space for people. As creatives, we are not simply making something, but also holding space. Sometimes that can be quite challenging, especially if the subject is heavy, like grief and sorrow.  But it's something that often quite rewarding because the pain that comes with loss can also be sitting right next to the feeling of relief from being able to share that pain with others. We don't really measure any kind of effectiveness here, but rather we look for responses through stories that people tell us; then we know something has “landed” or something really resonates with an audience. 

As a visitor to Hong Kong, what aspects of the city's unique blend of tradition and modernity do you find most intriguing for potential future projects?

Hong Kong is a city that feels alive with stories, where each corner seems to hold a narrative waiting to be told. Seen in daily interactions everywhere you go, respect for age-old traditions go hand in hand with being a city of rapid development and technological shifts. In line with the kind of projects that affect lab takes on, we would love to explore more community based stories, in light of historical shifts that have taken place in recent years; tales of heritage, migration and cultural exchange. Always looking for the hidden stories, we are intrigued to take on projects to find these stories and understand the significance of traditions within a changing society, and engage local storytellers and participants while doing this work.

yisekai

You're making your debut as yisekai with Woonjii at Tai Kwun. How did this collaboration come about, and what unique elements do each of you bring to the duo?

JayMe: Last year I was invited by Woonji to DJ at her yisekai event. Knowing that this party is about pushing boundaries and being fearless, I decided to put together a set of leftfield, weird, atypical but still beautiful music from my collection. I felt so liberated during the party because I can just go all out doing my thing without worrying about the crowd, like in the usual dance parties. After that, I was invited by M+ to play an experimental set at their Asian Avant-Garde film festival. I wanted to do it with another DJ, and the first person that came to my mind was none other than Woonji. That’s the start of our collaboration as a DJ duo. Woonji is usually responsible for the more abstract and experimental aspect, while I will take care of the musical direction in the conventional sense.

Woonji: A year ago, I founded yisekai to promote ambient, drone, experimental, leftfield (atypical and unconventional) electronic music and also organised several parties promoting local music producers. Later I was invited to be a guest speaker on “Hong Kong Street Culture” at M+ and co-curated “Gaming at Night” at M+. The Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival later invited Jimmy and I to play and design a vinyl wall to showcase rare experimental collections from Asia. We were so excited that we could finally play the rare records we had collected for years. The yisekai’s curation and music direction match the concept of Tai Kwun's Artists’ Night 2025 so perfectly, therefore Jimmy and I decided to produce a few new tracks and DJ’s edit to perform as a duo named “yisekai”. 

As Hong Kong DJ, how has the city's vibrant electronic music scene shaped your sound and style for more than a decade? 

JayMe: I went to New York and experienced the House music scene in person in the 90's and it was unforgettable. I always wanted to bring that experience to Hong Kong so I played with other DJs in different venues to promote the soulful, funky and uplifting music, such as REACH4luvhk, with a decent sound system in my own space. On another note, I commissioned Woonji to organize my record collection of about 4000 vinyl to facilitate my vinyl selections in diverse genres from House and Techno to breakbeat, electro, deconstructed and IDM. The club scene in Hong Kong has been thriving for the past three years with many DJs playing various genres and it continues to shape my style and I am happy that I inspire other DJs, too.

Woonji: Yea, I was one of them. The REACH4luvhk parties in Hong Kong uplifted me and I'd dive more into the music that was warm and energetic. People put down their phones, simply enjoyed the moment and made real people's connections. The REACH community and the staff were friendly, the sound system was immersive and detailed, the space was always safe and the crowd were carefree. It's a hidden gem of the city. I had experienced the electronic music scene in the UK, Berlin and Amsterdam. There is no place like that anywhere around the world. 

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Your music seems to blend various electronic genres. Can you share how you craft your signature sound and what inspirations you draw from?

JayMe: I grew up listening to disco, house music, things with lots of melody and a strong rhythmic element. These are my roots but I also love other genres including electro new wave and industrial. When I discovered Woonji's yisekai, I found the perfect opportunity to play them. Woonji’s inclination towards techno, noise, and experimental music inspired me to try different things. We are combining these two elements in our music production and live performance. We are paying tribute to legendary artists we love, artists who have performed in Hong Kong as well as some underrated artists that deserve more love and appreciation.

Woonji: We found the perfect balance of sound among the music we love. There are melodic and groovy rhythms with acid effect, hypnotic techno with synth pop melody. All these elements represent our unique style as a duo. 

What can the audience expect from your live set at Artists' Night? Any special surprises or tracks you're particularly excited to share?

JayMe: For the “yiniverse” party, we are producing new songs from those inspirations and will perform live for the first time as a duo. We will do synthpop, electro and House music with a disco favour. I will sing and play keyboards and Kate (Woonji) will play synth and drums. One of the tunes is inspired by my cat named Sindy, which is real fun to work on! As for surprises, you will have to find out at the show. 

Woonji: I love playing my tiny drum machine and synth with sound distortion. I love my first track "Momentum” very much. The inspiration came from a metaverse sci-fi road trip with a cyberpunk aesthetic in steady uniform energy. Casey Anderson has added some adventurous elements into the tracks and he will also perform a live “yiniverse” visual. 

With Hong Kong's electronic scene evolving rapidly, where do you see yourself and yisekai fitting into the city's musical landscape in the coming years?

JayMe: This show has opened up a new door to me in the creative capacity, which is really exciting. I look at yisekai like a “reverse electronic duo”. In the usual case like Yazoo or Boy Harsher, you see a female singer paired with a male synthesizer wizard. I want to try to reverse that role, that I am the frontman and Kate (Woonji) being in the background. This is visually very fresh, and I believe our different musical ideas will bring out some unforeseen sparks to the scene.

Woonji: yisekai will continue to push the boundary of the musical, art and cultural landscape in the city and continue to experiment unconventional music as the most abstract art form. 

33EMYBW

Your upcoming audiovisual performance, Holes of Sinian, blends vocal samples and field recordings from diverse cultures. What inspired this concept, and what story are you hoping to tell through it?

Holes of Sinian is the name of my last album, which was inspired by the Ediacaran biota (635-541 million years ago) that suddenly became extinct due to evolutionary failure. I fictionalized their habitat and lingering in nonlinear time, and tried to understand life evolution and death from a human perspective. Some of the performance tracks are remixes of the album tracks, and some are unpublished. Holes of Sinian describes the contingency of the universe and life: time is like holes in a stone that are interconnected and nonlinear, and evolutionary failure is not a conclusion. In this conceptual context, they have other ways of existence and appear in another form in other time and space.

Your music often combines Chinese folk traditions with experimental electronic sounds. How do you approach balancing these influences to create something so futuristic yet rooted in heritage?

As an electronic music producer, I hope to establish my own signature rhythm/sound and build my own electronic music methodology. In addition to drawing inspiration from images, I have also conducted field research and field recording in southwest and northeast China in recent years. Chinese traditional culture and ethnic minority culture are a huge treasure trove. In addition to rich sound materials, I have also gained more diverse perspectives, which have made me rethink the relationship between people, technology and the environment, and allowed me to enter electronic music in a new way. The fusion of one culture and another will produce more changes and developments, and this is true for both traditional culture and electronic music. Therefore, rather than being rooted in tradition, it is better to say that it is crossing and growing in the boundaries and gaps between different cultures.

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Your performances are known for their striking visuals. How do you integrate visual storytelling into your music, and what role does it play in shaping the audience's experience?

The visuals for this performance were created by British artist Joey Holder, with whom I have collaborated many times before. In the collaboration, I first gave her my music and creative concepts, as well as some of my drawings. In her previous works, she has raised philosophical questions about our universe and the unknown things in science, technology, and human-machine-animal interactions. In the "Holes of Sinian" A/V Show, she once again created an immersive multimedia "world". Through the use of AI technology, she is also further exploring how technology and our belief systems - such as myths and culture - profoundly affect the way we perceive, interact with, and understand the environment.

You've described your sound as "arthropod dance." Can you explain what this means and how it reflects your creative vision?

"Arthropod dance" is my description of my music. I came up with this concept when I released my first album "Golem". Arthropods are the most diverse animals on earth. Each unit of their body is equipped with nerves, and different segments have different functions. These body structures are both monomeric and reflect the overall state of the organism. I create organic rhythms that grow, change, and reorganize from the inside, just like the mechanical beauty of arthropods. This is arthropod dance. I have made an improvisational collage series using mobile phone software as a tool. I used my own face and arthropods to transform and repeat to create some new creatures or mimicry, so as to achieve a kind of self-replication, and complete it within a limited time without modification. This series is a bit like a derivative of the concept of "arthropod dance".

This is a rare chance for Hong Kong audiences to experience your work live. What excites you most about performing here, and how do you think the city’s energy will influence the show?

Thank you very much for the invitation to Tai Kwun to participate in the annual Artist Night. This is the first time to present my audio visual show in Hong Kong. I am looking forward to having new experiences in this space and city!

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