Elsewhere in Me: Four Live Art Commissions Trace Hong Kong's Hidden Terrain

A City as Stage, a Body as Compass

To mark its thirtieth anniversary, Para Site has unveiled Elsewhere in Me: Live Art in the City — a series of four newly commissioned performances that unfold episodically across Hong Kong from 20 June to 6 December 2026. Curated by Celia Ho and Jessie Kwok, the programme positions the city not as backdrop but as collaborator, inviting four practitioners to chart its thresholds, waterways, and forgotten corners through durational, site-responsive work.

The roster spans geographies as much as disciplines. Yim Sui Fong, River Lin, Tong Wenmin, and Justin Talplacido Shoulder (also known as Phasmahammer) each bring distinct yet overlapping concerns — sound, embodiment, ecology, and myth — to bear on Hong Kong's layered urban fabric. Together, they ask what it means to find one's way through a city that has itself been in constant flux since Para Site first opened its doors in 1996.

Sound, Soil, and the More-Than-Human

Yim Sui Fong returns to the very site and soundscape where Para Site was founded, drawing on personal narrative and expressive impulse to construct a sonic project rooted in listening. The work probes the collective frequencies that emerge between solitude and mediation, transforming shared voices into something almost vibrational.

River Lin takes a different approach, mapping a week-long diary of encounters across Hong Kong's terrain. Merging private reflection with public intervention, Lin's performances stage quiet juxtapositions within everyday settings — prompting passers-by to pause and reconsider the meanings embedded in communal space.

Tong Wenmin gathers earth and botanical matter from the cityscape, animating these materials through the body in what she describes as a collective ritual. Her sensorial choreography of voice and movement contemplates how natural elements and human lives become entangled within systems of construction and urban development.

Justin Talplacido Shoulder rounds out the programme with a tribute to local water deities, filtered through a queer and animist lens. The performance incubates a hybrid, mythic creature — part ritual, part speculative fiction — that attunes audiences to hidden organisms and living networks flowing beneath the city's surface.

Wayfinding as Practice

What unites these four commissions is a shared commitment to impermanence. Rather than producing objects or permanent installations, Elsewhere in Me offers fleeting, embodied encounters — moments designed to anchor participants in spaces of shared belonging without fixing them in place. The artists function as active wayfinders, proposing alternative routes through a city defined by detours and crossroads.

All events are free and open to the public. Programme details, including specific dates and locations, will be announced via Para Site's website and social media channels.

Founded by seven Hong Kong-based artists in 1996, Para Site has grown into one of the region's most influential non-profit contemporary art spaces, having mounted over 300 exhibitions, hosted more than 80 international residents, and delivered upwards of 1,000 public programmes — all freely accessible.