Public Programming
A NIGHT OF PERFORMANCES:
BODY TONGUE, CHÚC MỪNG NĂM MỚI!
bones tan jones, Will Pham & VLC band
Asymmetry, 102a Albion Drive, London E8 4LY
Door opens at 6.30PM, 23.02.2024
On the occasion of the Lunar New Year festivities coinciding with the opening of our new public space in the same building that houses Asymmetry HQ, we are excited to present a Night of Performances on Friday, 23 February 2024.
bones tan jones will perform ‘Body Tongue,’ an operatic vocal soundscape that weaves together narratives from their childhood with fables to create a new mythology. In the performance that honours generational old lullabies, Western opera melds with Chinese martial art movements, conjuring a communion with ancestral kins.
Will Pham will present ‘Chúc mừng năm mới!’, a live performance of nostalgic songs by the VLC band from Centre 151, a Hackney-based community centre set up in 1985, formerly known as the Community Centre for Refugees from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia (VLC). Evoking memories of the artist’s experience attending events at the VLC Centre when he was little, Pham will narrate his experience as part of the Vietnamese refugee community through video projections of archival materials looking at Vietnamese parties, Viet joy and style, with vocal contributions by invited friends Koa Pham and Trâm Nguyen.
6.30PM Door opens
7.00PM bones tan jones, 'Body Tongue'
7.45PM Will Pham & VLC band, 'Chúc mừng năm mới!'
The performances will be accompanied by a cordial celebration with food, drinks, and music.
FREE ENTRY, TICKET HERE
Photos by Vero Chen. Courtesy of Asymmetry
BIOGRAPHY
bones tan jones (b. Liverpool) is a queer heretic whose work traverses materials, disciplines and timelines. Raised in a church choir in the northwest of the UK, on the borderlands of mythical Wales and enchanted England, tan jones’s work has never strayed far from the ecclesiastic rituals of worship, only in tan jones’s world, the church has been burnt, the yew trees thrive in the ashes, and god is trans. bones tan jones presents their living praxis ‘optimystic dystopia’ as a spiritual practice. An eternal storyteller, they explore alternative realities through alter egos, retelling ancient Chinese and Celtic mythologies through creating symphonies, operas, psalms, triptychs, sigils, stele, installations, interventions and inter-active workshops.
Will Pham is a British-Vietnamese artist working in video, live performance and socially engaged practice. His work explores intergenerational care, cultural inheritance, community building and refugee narratives within the UK. Will Pham graduated from the Postgraduate Fine Art programme at the Royal Academy Schools in 2018 and BA Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art & Design in 2013.
He was an Associate Lecturer at the Royal College of Art in 2023, teaching his own unit ‘Archives On the Move’ as part of Urgency of the Arts. He was invited as Visiting Lecturer at Goldsmiths University, BA Fine Art & History of Art, in Spring 2024. Solo exhibitions and commissions include VMHS Legacy Project, Vietnamese Mental Health Services (2023), Nocturnal Creatures, Whitechapel Gallery (2022), Rokoko, Skelf (2021), Record, Retrieve, Reactivate, CFCCA (2020), Little Vietnam, Turf Projects (2019) and RA Schools Show, Royal Academy Schools (2018).