Hera Chan (Hong Kong)

Gossip is a Fearful Thing

Based on the rumor of 1930’s Shanghai-based silent film actress Ruan Lingyu, who left in her suicide note these words: “Gossip is a fearful thing, gossip is a fearful thing.” Chan performed a dramatic reading of a political theatre script that drew upon traditions of pageantry and street theatre in Hong Kong and factory plays from Mainland China. As a possible conclusion to her recent project Miss Ruthless International, her lecture-performance also ruminated on the most powerful discursive force in contemporary art; that is gossip.

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Hera Chan, Gossip is a Fearful Thing, 2017. Performance documentation
FIELD MEETING Take 5: Thinking Project, November 14th at Asia Society.

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Hera Chan is the curator and managing director of Videotage in Hong Kong. Committed to sustaining networks of solidarity through media infrastructures, she co-founded and was director of Atelier Céladon in Montreal. In 2017 as part of Para Site Hong Kong’s Emerging Curators program, she co-curated In Search of Miss Ruthless exhibition and public programs in part- nerships with Spring Workshop (Hong Kong) and UCCA (Beijing).

Judy Dan from Hong Kong places third runner-up in first Miss Universe, televised from Long Beach, California in 1952. Courtesy of the artist