HONG KONG. For decades Western cinema – Hollywood – has dominated the international movie scene. Thanks to martial arts master Bruce Lee the 70s gave ‘the West’ its first peek into Asian culture, and recent years have seen an encouraging new wave of Asian cinema and Asian-inspired Western cinema coming into play from blockbusters like Pixar’s Turning Red, Marvel’s Shang Chi, and Crazy Rich Asians. But where is this cultural shift in film representation stemming from?
The answer is right in front of our eyes. As the largest population in the world, Asia will inevitably continue to make waves in different sectors with creativity and entrepreneurialism at the forefront. Some of the best filmmakers are based in Asia and with Parasite (Bong Joonho, Korea) and Chungking Express (Wong Kar-wai, Hong Kong) impressing the likes of big names like Quentin Tarantino, foreign directors are setting the stage.
Collaborations between Western and Eastern filmmakers will be one of the most prolific cinematic movements and the literary scene is taking note – writers and multi-disciplinary creatives are one of the most sought-after talents in Asia right now. Zooming out from the era of Asian cinema and tapping into this near future, Nury Vittachi a Hong Kong-based journalist, author, and founder of Asia Literary Review and Hong Kong International Literary Festival, speaks with us on Asia’s creative scene, and the books and films leading the wave.
Paradigm Haus: Can you tell us about Asia’s creative scene?
Nury Vittachi: Basically, there’s a huge anomaly. Until recently, most of the creative material in English books was from the West. What’s Asia’s contribution to culture in the terms of books, stories, and screenplays? Almost nothing.
Anomalies are quite good because they normally fix themselves, which will lead to growth in Asia. That’s why publishers have offices in Hong Kong looking for the next great trend. It’s also why all the movies we watch today have Asian characters in it including Jet Li and recently Michelle Yeoh. The market is recognizing this change and has accelerated. In fact, China retained the top spot at the box office with US$7.9 billion in 2021.
Chinese cinema and the rest of the Asian movie market is overtaking globally. So publishers are saying that is going to happen in books as well. We need to find the next Harry Potter and the next JK Rowling, who will likely be Asian!
PH: How has the Asian creative market entered the West so quickly and effectively?
NV: It’s partly numbers. The population is larger and we produce a lot – some good, some not so good. But if 1% of Asian material is fantastic, then it adds up. The market is on our side because most of the consumers in the world are Asian. Eventually getting fed up with the likes of Harry Potter – they want their own material. The other thing is that Asian culture has not been exploited in the way that Western culture has been exploited. For example, you’ve seen a million movies or books about witches and wizards – that’s classic Western culture. But have you seen a million movies and books about ancient Asian folklore? Do you think language is a barrier? Well, people are finding a way around it. All the big publishing companies now have scouts who look at Asian language publications – and these writers are making it on the Booker Prize List. A Hong Kong filmmaker recently made it on the Oscars list, Derek Tsang. Tsang was on the shortlist for foreign language movies, the first Hong Kong filmmaker on it for years.
The other change is that movies these days are made with less dialogue, and more visuals. For example, Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne film has an entire dialogue of around 200 lines for the whole movie, and the average line was three words like “move” or “now.” With this style of tiny phrases, it’s easy to understand and not even necessary to translate.
PH: Which comes first – market then movie or movie then market?
NV: Big companies are very aware of trends. I remember about 15 to 20 years ago, I got a phone call from an agent in Hollywood, Miramax I think. She said, “I’m standing in a Hong Kong bookshop and it’s full of Harry Potter, but I’ve been sent here to look for Asian writers. You’re the only one I can find. What’s happened to the Asian writers?” That was 20 years ago and Hollywood was already becoming aware of the need for Asian representation. We need Asian movies.
Disney has been at the forefront sending out agents and feelers for years. They’ve tried to remake Asian books into Disney movies. They’ve tried to send money to China to make Asian-style movies. They’ve tried all sorts of things, with experiments using Asian-Americans, like the first Mulan, and then they tried using actual people born in Asia, then the second Mulan, which had mixed reactions. But they are trying at least.
There is still an opportunity for the next great Asian writer to hit the global stage. We’re counting on you, the next generation. I know one publisher who actively reads things like fan fiction and poetry and they are actually looking for Asian writers.
PH: How do you think the process has changed? Like the scouting process or the ability to be discovered?
NV: For the big Western companies, the process should be easier. But it’s not to be honest because movies are still dominated by the West and so they’re using the same stars. In Asia, however, it’s a bit more interesting because it is surprisingly quite creative. So Asia invented live streaming, for example – Asia invents a lot of stuff, but we don’t realize it. Like, I’ll give you an example between 2003 and 2006. The top stories in this part of the world, the biggest part of the world, were either on phones or on computers. They were texts based on technology and that was before the iPhone was invented and before the Kindle was invented. Right. So the best-selling stories in Asia were text-based stories before the keyboard, which not a lot of people know about. They would immediately assume Kindle invented eBooks. But no. They were never in print. They were always on your phone, always on your computer, always on, well now your iPad.
There was one called “the ghost blows out the candle”, using the typical Chinese story. People are hunting for some treasure and then somebody blows out the candle and you’re in the dark. Who blew out the candle? It’s none of us, so it must’ve been, you know, the ghost. It was a huge hit in China. Everybody had it on their phone and computer – it was like the first big e-book sensation and nobody in the Western world even knew about it. Eventually, the writer sold the story to a physical book publisher who tried to publish it. But the Chinese government had lots of weird rules at the time and one of the rules was that no occult stuff. So, they said, well, can you rewrite the book but without the ghost? So that was a bit problematic. Fortunately, in the last couple of years, the Chinese government has totally relaxed and the ghost blowing out the candle became a TV series.
PH: Which regions in Asia are becoming popular for creative writers?
NV: Well, not so much a region, but a whole region. The biggest potential market is books and stories for young people. There are 750 million young people in Asia. Now name an Asian children’s book writer. There aren’t any, right? So even when we were doing the literary festival here, we had to import children’s book writers from America, England, and Australia, all the Western countries with majority white writers. So there’s a huge opportunity for local writers, because Western books would begin with “Billy went out of his house to play baseball” and we think, okay, nobody is called Billy and nobody plays baseball [in Asia]. Not good.
We’ve been trying to cultivate local talent a lot. So we ran competitions to try and get the standard up. And it was really frustrating for the last seven or eight years, because what we found was great children’s book art but really bad stories – they just weren’t interesting. Like really bad folk tales, but in the past couple of years, the standard of stories has come up. So, I think within the next year or two, we’ll start to see more children’s books from Asia.
Have you heard of the Gruffalo? Are you the Gruffalo generation? Now here’s some interesting gossip from the industry that drives the Asian book industry mad. You know why? Because the story is taken from here. It’s an Asian story that the writer Julia Donaldson read and then rewrote and published it with a Western publisher. And now it’s the biggest selling children’s book of the last 10 years or something. Occasionally in interviews, she will say, by the way, I took it from an Asian quote – but usually, she doesn’t say that.
Another interesting one is Cinderella. There’s something weird about Cinderella compared to all the other Western folktales and traditional fairy tales. Typically, the woman marries the prince because she’s beautiful or clever or both. There’s no such fairy tale where a woman marries a prince because she has small feet. There’s only one place in the world where that makes sense – Asia. So Cinderella was written in China like thousands and thousands of years ago, and it made sense. It made sense to find that it was stolen. It was pirated by the French about 400 years ago or 300 years ago. And then it’s now everybody assumes, it’s a Walt Disney production with Walt Disney copyright. But in fact, it’s a story from this part of the world and only makes sense in this part of the world.
This article is from our Asia’s Emerging Creative Scene feature available to read in print. Get your limited edition copy here.
I’ve never been a morning person and I couldn’t tell you the last time I purposefully woke up to catch a sunrise. But one frosty morning in Vienna at 05:30, I was awoken by an impalpable energy coursing within me that I could only interpret as the siren call of the Viennese city below me. Its cultivated cityscape awash in staggering shades of crimson coloured Morgenrot set fire to my soul, famished for culture and immediately did Karl Kraus’ quote spring to mind, “The streets of Vienna are paved with culture, the streets of other cities with Asphalt.” At once my eyes were drawn to the Hofburg Imperial Palace with its enchanting palatial domes of turquoise and tiffany-blue, reminiscent of its former Habsburgs Empire who ruled first over the Austrian patrimonial lands from the days of the Holy Roman Empire until its final days of reign over the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of the first world war. Just a kilometer away stands Vienna’s historical jewel St Stephen’s Cathedral, an illustrious incomplete monument which exhibits the city’s fascinating and ever-shifting historical landscape in all its non-traditional gothic, Romanesque and zigzag-tiled roof architectural amalgamated glory. As ruby hues gave gradual way to a florid orange glow and morning light swept through the rousing downtown, illuminating the distant landmark giant wheel of the Wiener Prater just across the water in Leopoldstadt and even further back, sleek and modern skyscrapers emerged into visibility. Like every other aspect of this carefully curated city of blended cultures, the contrast between New vs Old Vienna somehow fuses together tastefully with the impressive DC Tower I soaring above simplistically elegant rows of Biedermeier neoclassical townhouses, reflecting dazzling strokes of golden light onto the legendary Danube River. It inspired me to reflect upon the insurmountable centuries of change, of paradigm shifts, of revolution, restoration and reconstruction – and how these cities and the stories left behind will outlast us all, as they did the Romans, their Imperial Reich, the logical empiricists of the Vienna Circle and the occupation of the National Socialists.
These curious little existentialist whispers remained with me throughout the rest of my visit in Vienna, because nothing makes the passing of time feel quite as surreal as this timeless historic city with its immaculate paths and pristine façades maintained to appear as if it, miraculously, simply stood the test of time. As I ambled along storybook cobblestone alleys and passed by the stately traditional Wiener coffeehouses of the historic Ringstraße’s innere Stadt, I quietly observed the elegantly understated aura of the Viennese folk around town. I have always somewhat considered imitation to be the highest form of flattery and so I thought to myself, “When in Wien, do as the Viennese do”. I popped on Johann Strauss’ 10-minute waltz ‘An der schönen blauen Donau ‘, straightened out my posture and donned the uniform demeanour of Austrian aloof affability as one so naturally does on their morning stroll down the Canal; Semmel bread roll in one hand, coffee in the other. I even tipped my head ever so slightly and greeted passers-by with a lilting “Grüß Gott!”, deliberately letting my roll ever so delicately, doing right by the famously melodic Austrian German dialect.
By afternoon, I was hopelessly besotted with the city after having fallen into an artistic trance at the Kunsthistoriches Museum from gazing up at the lavishly painted arches and columns of Gustav Klimt. I walked back out onto the large sprawling main streets lined with their sumptuous mix of baroque, gothic, neo-renaissance and classical buildings and headed straight for the Burggarten where I found myself at the foot of Mozart’s monument. For a few minutes, I simply looked up at the composer’s stone visage and basked in my admiration and gratitude for his arias and sonatas which were musical comforts throughout my childhood. “Danke schön” I whispered in thanks to Mozart, to Vienna, to no one in particular really, but to the unparalleled experience of learning and discovering such abundant beauty and culture that it seizes you with inspiration and reignites our inner artist, our musician and our creator who lives within each and every one of us.
Image Courtesy of Maxime Evangelista
This article is from our Vienna diary feature available to read in print. Get your limited edition copy here.
SEATTLE. Nick Harmer is an original member and the bassist for 25 Years with Alt-Rock Band Death Cab for Cutie. With nine studio albums under its belt since its debut in 1997, he reminds us that a love for music can withstand generations and the industrialization of the industry. The band which at this point needs little introduction came out of Bellingham, Washington starting from the college friendship and dorm rooms of lead singer Ben Gibbard and Harmer.
A cultural canon for the Orange County surfers in California to suburban kids around the world, their most commercially successful album at the time, “Transatlanticism”in 2003 was a pioneer for the indie-rock sounds of the early 2000s. A backdrop to coming of age stories of first loves, breakups, and growing up.
Harmer cites that even in his memories, music has acted as a tool to remember the different eras of his life: growing up in Seattle, Tokyo vinyl shopping, touring to crowds of twenty or thousands, and making it through Hollywood parties.
Like many of us, music has played a key role in the evolution of our personal histories, and to quote Harmer, “in a lot of ways, our music has kind of evolved with our age and our life experiences as we’ve moved along… Music has always been an extension of ourselves.”
A band that has made it through the death of record stores, an era of college radio, high school mixtapes to now TikTok Top 40s, it is their value for good communication and authenticity that has held them together.
“We all really value each other’s friendships and the time we spend together. We love going on adventures and playing music together. It’s our community.”
When you think of friendship and the relationships we hold, you can relate to the lives of Harmer and Gibbard, sitting backstage after a concert putting on R.E.M. records, discussing their favorites of all time, and playing records together.
“I can’t imagine spending my life doing that with anyone other than the other four guys in the band that I’m with…If that seems fun to you, then hang out with Death Cab for Cutie, because that’s what we do.”
Even in the commercial success, to Harmer “the band is still very much intact from how it was in the very beginning”. Getting caught up in commercial success has not changed their creative process. Harmer tells us “the band started as Ben in a room recording a bunch of songs into a dictaphone by himself. And that’s the core of it from here until the end.”
When breaking down the process, it starts top down – lyrics or samples from leader Ben Gibbard, before rifts and edits from Nick to the other members. “If he [Ben] never comes up with memorable lyrics or a melody that feels compelling, the song never goes anywhere.”
As a band that came up in an era of touring – they’ve lived the Almost Famous life – with bus tours across America playing in front of crowds of 50 if they were lucky. The come-up to recognition has been slow and methodical for them, and in many ways how they ‘planned’ it. When it comes to the pressure, becoming recognized by the public, and performance aspects, Death Cab has always said, “You know what? It’s about the work, and it’s about the music.”
For many bands in the 90s, the only way to make money was on tour. Today, bands start with an online following and miss the five-year start Death Cab had without cell phones. There is no chance to navigate, adjust and learn in the same way. To Harmer, this was a major advantage.
“Each time we played, there’d be a few more people. It felt really manageable for us to have our career move in this slow crescendo… Even though only a few more people each time were showing up or buying our records, we were headed in some good direction.”
To support emerging artists, Harmer hires from a crew of local people, brings local bands on national tours, and gives credit to new music. He says, ‘we want to share our knowledge… And [we are] always available for phone calls, talking to people about our experiences, and just trying to share the advice that we have earned over the years.”
As Death Cab’s career has grown, fostering a ‘good and healthy’ music scene is key. This includes not only bands and musicians but graphic designers, photographers, and a pool of creatives to draw from.
This article is from our artist profile feature on Nick Harmer available to read in print. Get your limited edition copy here.
Lorcan Finnegan’s exploration into uncanny dystopia settings started way before Vivarium, the highly-praised debut featuring Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg. His career began in creating surreal absurdist content for Zeppotron, one of Charlie Brooker’s early ventures before Black Mirror, where he began shooting sketch comedy and motion graphics. Fast forward through his career, Finnegan started his own company Lovely Productions to pursue independent short films, which followed with Foxes, Without Name and Vivarium. The Irish director has been busy since and is working on several projects on the go including an upcoming film with Eva Green and Mark Strong.
We spoke with Finnegan on his key themes interwoven in each film, including what makes a dystopia, sociopolitical systems and Irish folklore.
Faye Bradley: Could you give us a bit of background on yourself and how you got into filmmaking?
Lorcan Finnegan: I studied graphic design originally – I thought at the time that graphics was more like motion graphics, you know, from watching things like the Channel Four logo coming together and stuff like that. So I was like, oh yeah, that looks cool. Graphic design. And then I studied graphic design and it turned out to be mostly about print. But I started experimenting with animation in college, just sort of teaching myself some motion graphics and animation and I made a couple of short films, like fake trailers for movies, and a stop motion interactive game and stuff like that. When I graduated, I was really into absurdist comedy. So I was watching a lot of American and British surreal and absurdist comedy and was watching a show called Unnovations which was like a fake shopping channel comedy show and I got in touch with the creators of the show at Zeppotron in London. And I asked if I could get a job doing whatever. They were starting to make comedy content for the very first mobile phones with video that came preloaded with content. So I ended up getting a job with them and ended up editing some of this comedy content. They gave me a camera course and I started shooting some sketch comedy on a PD 150, which is a mini DV camera and doing motion graphics and intro sequences to the sketches and stuff like that.
That company actually ended up making Black Mirror much later – it was Charlie Brooker’s company. Then I started creating sketches myself with my friends in Dublin. I’d borrow equipment from work and fly back and make stuff with my friends. And then I realised that I preferred not working for anybody. So I started a small company, just to make my own stuff and started applying for short script awards and funding to try and get stuff made.
My first short film that had a budget was called Changes – it’s about two caterpillars in love and when they emerge after metamorphosis, with one of them has turned into an unpleasant butterfly. She’s really mean to the other butterfly and they break up. It did well and won some festivals.
From there, I got to make more. I got funding for another short film called Defaced. I was putting everything I was doing on the internet. It was at a time when YouTube was really just coming up. Its content was user-generated and they were trying to get more short films and things like that. So a lot of people ended up seeing the shorts that I was making. And then an ad agency got in touch asking if I could direct a TV commercial in this style. So I started doing some TV commercials and music videos and that kind of thing. So it was kind of an organic transition from graphic design to filmmaking. I think once you start making films, there’s definite interest in feature films since it’s a big challenging project to take on, to create an entire movie. So that’s what I’m doing at the moment.
FB: Your feature film Vivarium came out in 2019 which was actually before the pandemic hit. How do you think the meaning of the film has changed since its launch, with reference to concepts like self-isolation and people’s views of the future?
LF: So Vivarium was coming out in March and I was in France. It came out in France first and then it was supposed to come in the U.S., in late March, early April. So I was in Paris and a lot of people came to see the film on the day of release but there was already a fear of coronavirus and people were a little bit wary. The next day the government started shutting down the schools and the following day they shut down cinemas. So it was a bit of a bummer. And then I had planned on doing a US promotional thing with Jesse and Imogen and then suddenly everything closed there too.
I was lucky, first of all, to make the film and I got to travel a lot to festivals and all that kind of thing. But then it took on this other life of its own when people were watching it during lockdown. A couple stuck in a house with a child that was driving them crazy, not being able to go anywhere. You know, Jesse’s character, Tom contracts a mysterious illness and he starts coughing. There’s a book showing some sort of strange virus that seems to be dividing into a man and woman with this child in the middle. So there are all these weird coincidences. In some ways, if you’re interested in collective consciousness, in which humans all share similar ideas and thought patterns, then maybe it was inevitable that we were going to make this film to be released for to watch during quarantine. It’s certainly interesting but I’ve never got to see it from that perspective. When you make a film, you never really get to see it as an audience member would. And even then the experience I’d have wouldn’t be the same as seeing somebody seeing during lockdown as a completely fresh thing. Did you guys see it during lockdown?
Paradigm Haus: We did yes. I think it was kind of like April or May last year.
LF: Right. It must have taken on a whole other meaning, but I think maybe it did no harm in a way because it’s quite existential in a lot of regards. So, I imagine people had a lot of time to think about their life and the future and what they would like life to be perhaps, while they were stuck at home.
FB: You mentioned quite a bit about Irish folklore in your film. How do you think this Irish folklore or these stories have influenced your creative processes?
LF: It’s interesting. It’s hard to tell what parts are folklore for me. Greek mythology, Roman mythology and those stories because they generally have a dual purpose. Their narratives are there to steer society or give whoever’s listening to the story some sort of moral guidance. And that’s sort of the function of folklore in many ways. There’s a lot of fairy stuff, I guess that could be related to Vivarium and Without Name. But Irish fairies aren’t really, you know, like Tinkerbell or anything. It’s much more of an idea that nature is an entity in itself and it sort of manifests as the faerie rather than a fairy and you know, there are ideas that they live under hills and all that kind of things. So, I’ve seen people draw parallels between Martin and some sort of changeling and that fairies live underground. So, I mean, maybe subconsciously there is an element of that. But it wasn’t put into the film as some sort of Irish folklore, but at the same time, I think our role, Garrett and I work together at creating these stories that could be, considered as modern folklore, because the means of telling stories now is different to when like people sat around the fire, before electricity. Now you can have an audiovisual story being told and it can still be folklore essentially.
Sarah Wei: Are there any futuristic concepts you’ve integrated into your films to kind of enhance this dystopic theme? Like where did they come from – are they parallel universes?
LF: Vivarium was influenced a lot by art, architecture and film. The idea of the lifting of the curb, I think came from like a Bansky painting, like lifting a curtain on the side of the street and sweeping stuff underneath, which sort of drew a parallel between what’s underneath, what’s behind, what’s the kind of machinery that’s driving consumer-capitalist society is never something that we really see and it’s sort of behind the curtain. So I think that’s where that idea came from. But yeah, I mean I was influenced by people like Roy Andersson, David Lynch’s films and Todd Haynes’ film Safe.
It’s also been a while since I’ve made the film – I’m currently making another film. So it’s hard to remember where all the various influences come from. But I don’t think it was so much thinking about this topic, worlds or dystopia, trying to do a film version of that. It’s more that we’re trying to explore themes, and through these themes create dystopic sort of environments for the stories play within. And that version of dystopia, it’s just this world of homogenous, characterless, de-humanised, gigantic housing developments. This was what was inspired by Foxes and what really went on after the crash in 2008 – all these abandoned housing developments with people living there and they were really trying to get out of their predicaments, but they were trapped there because they bought a house that cost way too much money and the banks wanted the mortgage paid back and all of that. So on a kind of parallel, the world we were creating for Vivarium was like an amplification of all of that in order to show how strange and absurd real-life would be if we all decided to that let a capitalist mindset just go for it – that’s what you’d end up with because they would literally strip back all of the natural world and cement you into little boxes that make it very easy to predict your behaviour and bleed you dry in order to just expand and keep growing, a little bit like Yonder itself. So, yeah, I mean, that probably leads to the whole technology thing as well, where like, you know, what the problem is with the future and all of this. Yeah. But it doesn’t look good.
FB: What is your take on us living through this internet age with all this new technology in a virtual reality-driven future?
LF: So I saw an article about cows in Japan wearing VR headsets that were showing green pastures that made calmer and produce more milk. It’s a pretty grim concept, but yeah, I mean, it’s strange. It’s strange, but there’s the version of the future where everyone just kind of goes along with it and just keeps on allowing their data out and all of that kind of thing, which is one version of one trajectory, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it became more punk and new wave to reject all of that and start taking privacy more seriously.
They may start using technology to better society rather than just kind of continuing in this sort of untenable pyramid scheme where people end up quite unhappy because they’re in a pursuit of happiness that is actually not real. It’s something that’s advertised. So I guess that’s the difference between individualism and community and all of that.
Technology is bringing people together in a lot of ways, but it’s also alienating people and isolating them and giving them sort of a false sense of reality. So, yeah, it’ll be interesting to what happens. I don’t have the answers to how we save ourselves from a horrible world like Yonder in Vivarium, but I think it’s up to the younger generations as well. There’s a responsibility for everybody to leave behind a world to the next generation, but then it’s also up to the next generations to visualise the kind of world that they want to live in and then make that into reality
SW: Yonder exists as its own community – there were only two people. Did you ever think about adding the other variables of neighborhood – more people and neighbors and stuff – and how does that kind of affect the society?
LF: Well with Vivarium, the idea is quite abstract. As we were developing the story, we conceptualised that there are other people in the houses, but they can’t see each other, which is sort of mirroring subdivisions and these sort of housing developments on commuter belts where people don’t actually know their neighbours and never see them because everyone is working all the time. We were also interested in string theory while working on this as well, that each home is sort of vibrating at a frequency that the next home is out of sync with. When Gemma goes underneath the curb and experiences the other houses, it’s as if she’s able to pass through these other dimensions and see there are people going through the exact same kind of things. And some people are handling it better than others. The idea was that the place is actually full of people, but nobody can talk to each other. They’re all trapped in their own little worlds.
SW: What do you think post-modern culture would look like? In the context of Vivarium, there wasn’t much of that community culture that we get in regular neighbourhoods or in this kind of like ghost estates, how they were kind of created from scratch?
LF: Maybe I’m just optimistic, but I have a feeling that people are starting to feel the absence of community in society. And I think that even during the whole lockdown, people are starting to notice and appreciate the smaller things like that, like knowing the people down the road and your neighbour, spending time locally and shopping locally and all of that kind of thing. Maybe that could be a positive takeaway from the whole pandemic, that there’s more of a veering towards respect and admiration and desire for community rather than pre pandemic when it was everyone was so busy working and trying to reach goals that were impossible and not spending enough time to just enjoy life and see their family and friends.
I’d like to think that post-modern society is more focused on community and producing local products and supporting the local community and less about giant corporations owning everything. Even like 20 years ago, you know, if you go traveling, each city fell quite different, you know, different shops. I remember people would come back from France with H&M clothes and you’re like, oh, cool you got that in France. Whereas now every high street is pretty much the same, everywhere in the world has the same stuff, which makes it all a bit boring, you know? It would be nice to see less of that and more choice and more local-based business. The film I’m working on now is sort of dealing with fast fashion and exploitation. I think people expect everything to be cheap. Therefore these giant companies do well because they buy up all of the smaller shops and offer people cheaper things. I think that if people appreciate spending money on things that lasted longer the community will do better and everyone would probably be happier.
FB: Do you have any recurring themes or themes that you would like to explore more in your filmmaking?
LF: It seems that these films have a cyclical theme to the nature of the narrative. When you’re making a film, you need to care about it – the themes that you’re trying to explore – enough to fuel the duration of development up to pre-production, production, post-production, you know because the whole process takes years. So it needs to be something you’re passionate about. The current film obviously I’m very passionate about. It has interesting themes on folklore and culture and cultural differences from the east and the west. It’s about a Filipino nanny who moves into the home of a fashion designer who is suffering from a mysterious illness and she uses a traditional folk healing to reveal a horrifying truth.
I’m working on another project with the same writer that’s about war, creating monsters in order to start wars and steal natural resources. So I suppose they’re quite universal themes that explore humanity but in a slightly sci-fi or genre way. The narratives wrapped up in a way that’s engaging I hope, but also it is multilayered and people get to disseminate it afterwards.
SW: Can you take us through how your creative process starts? Does it start from these themes that you were just talking about, like what’s topical, for example?
LF: It’s not like we think, oh, what’s topical? It’s more about what are we interested in and the starting point can be different for different projects. For example, the war film was inspired by paintings in the National Gallery here of David and Goliath. David is standing over Goliath and he looks like he’s about 15. Goliath is looking at him with sad eyes, not wanting his head to be chopped off. He looks like a sympathetic character and that image is what inspired the story. And with Vivarium, I suppose it was socio-political events that ended up inspiring the story because we made Foxes based on what was going on. And then that developed into Vivarium
With Without Name, it’s about a land surveyor who ends up trapped in this forest being protected by an entity. I think that was kind of vaguely inspired by a documentary about the Finnish nuclear waste disposal programme, burying nuclear waste underground and sealing it up because it will be dangerous for the next 2000 years and how they warn future generations not to go down there as it we don’t even know what language people will speak in the distant future. I guess that Garrett and I talk to each other a lot, so we ended up discussing these ideas and themes – talking and watching stuff and talking and watching stuff and then stories start to emerge and then I gather visuals and we watch a lot of films, documentaries, share them with each other and then the writing process starts and that can go for a couple of years. Generally, it takes maybe three or four years from the beginning of an idea to getting it into production.
SW: Would you say there’s any period in history of artists that you feel most inspired by or nostalgic for? Would you want to explore these even more in the future?
LF: Hmm, not really a period in time. I mean, in terms of films, I think I’m inspired by the sixties and seventies because they were a little bit more free. They were breaking the mold and experimenting and making really interesting films.
Now, there are new techniques emerging and new types of filmmaking coming out. But in terms of a time, not really, I mean, I’m interested in doing a prehistory story, set in the bronze age. There’s an amazing museum here in Dublin with preserved bodies which were found in bogs from the bronze age. There’s a guy who you can see who had his hair slicked back and has been preserved – he has his nipples cut off and apparently Kings used to have their nipples sucked and they cut his nipples off so they could never become King. So you know, it was an interesting time.
SW: What elements do you think make up a dystopian society? How do you integrate that into film?
LF: Ultimately a dystopia is like the opposite of utopia. And I think a lot of that comes from the feeling of dehumanisation, a lack of control and love, happiness, humanity, all those kind of things. I think with Vivarium, what we’re trying to do is create a very synthetic world that was tangible, but fake. So the boy was only mimicking a human only in order to reproduce like a brood parasite. He was completely devoid of humanity and the place is devoid of nature. The food is vacuum packed, processed and stuff just arrives boxes. So to me, that is a horrible nightmarish dystopia where everything looks the same and everything’s synthetic and there’s no nature anywhere to be found.
This article is from our interview feature on Lorcan Finnegan available to read in print. Get your limited edition copy here.
LONDON. An ever-evolving music and coffee culture scene in London have shaped the city into the creative hub it is now. An interview with Anthony West and Josephine Vander Gucht of indie-pop band Oh Wonder and Peckham cafe NOLA on the relationship between music and coffee and how NOLA is bringing together communities.
London has spawned some of the most successful indie bands over the decades. Drifting away from mainstream tunes, the ‘indie’ moniker can be categorized by its soft melodies, passionate drum beats, and home-strung instrumentals. The alternative rock music genre coincides with the independent artist ethos, taking an autonomous, homegrown appeal. Neighborhood live music venues of London have brought us today’s legends, from David Bowie playing at London’s Marquee Club in Soho to The Horrors at The Spread Eagle on Kingsland Road.
But moving forward from the ’70s and ’80s of pop-rock culture, the ’90s and 2000s saw a surge in more acoustic melodies to soothe the soul – with indie fan favorites including The Libertines, Bombay Bicycle Club, and The xx. A more recent emergence from London’s indie scene is Oh Wonder, made up of couple Josephine Vander Gucht and Anthony West. The artists began their journey in 2014 when they were dropping one track per month for a year in anticipation of their debut album. The band became an instant hit with millions of streams, a series of tours, and four more album releases. Growing up around a live music scene was crucial in the making of the band and its influences. “We both grew up in the indie scene in London, playing super small venues and pubs to very small crowds,” Vander Gucht and West tell Paradigm Haus. Digital presence was instrumental in helping boost a loyal fan base. “Streaming services have had a huge impact on the way bands can develop and have enabled musicians to not just rely on playing shows to be noticed by fans and the industry.” The duo pointed out that it certainly helped them with forming an audience, but in-person attendance is of course, essential. “You can have many listeners and fans of your music without ever having played a show, but we both feel like it’s so important to get on stage, find yourself as a musician, and grow in a very organic way.”
So what’s changed besides our obvious relationships with technology and an ability to ‘discover’ new artists online? London, without a doubt, has become a hub for artisanal coffee culture – one that has percolated over recent years. The spectrum of coffee options is wide-reaching with each district showcasing its own unique charm, and as a ritual stopover for many work commuters, coffee shops are embedded in the typical Londoner’s regime. It’s music that makes this daily pursuit even more uplifting – and is something that Oh Wonder has embraced with open arms.
“London is our home,” Oh Wonder tells us, on London’s influence on the band’s creative processes, “it’s where we grew up, where we met, where our studio is – it has soundtracked our whole relationship”. They noted that the new albums are very personal and reflective of the conversations they have walking around their neighborhood. Oh Wonder had just started their first week into a world tour when the most unexpected, unprecedented call came to return home due to the pandemic. “We’d just released our third album, and put so much work into creating the live show,” they said, “it was actually really difficult to go from performing on stage and being mentally prepared to play hundreds of shows to thousands of people, to sitting inside with absolutely no prospect of live music opening back up.” This global loss of live music was undoubtedly a struggle for many bands and hindered opportunities for touring. It was at this moment that Oh Wonder decided to expand its ventures into the London coffee culture scene while being able to merge it with music.
Opening NOLA in Peckham, London was a way to stay creative during lockdown, they added. “We became extremely grateful for our community and neighborhood…We admire that each coffee shop, whilst sometimes being a destination coffee spot, predominantly and proudly serves its local people.” Choosing Peckham as the neighborhood for NOLA was no coincidence. The South London abode is frequently overshadowed by the likes of hipster Shoreditch and Soho but it has been cropping up on more radars thanks to its up-and-coming creative scene. To the couple Peckham is, “the center of culture and cool for South London.” Adding to the buzzing appeal of the affluent area, “it’s where we walk our dog, go out for dinner, drink cocktails, see friends, visit ceramic fairs and creative markets, go to the gym, fix our bike, do yoga…it’s the best place!”
Image Courtesy of French+Tye
The duo opened NOLA with the intent to fully welcome a neighborhood community. “Our slogan is ‘coffee for everyone’…for us, this means being able to facilitate the local coffee fans who want to enjoy our hand brew or try our rotating seasonal espressos, whilst also welcoming those who just want a flat white and a chat.” Coffee is about connecting with people, they said, “It’s a ritual, it’s an escape, it’s joy.”
Merging music with coffee culture was a given for the duo. The chosen tunes in a coffee shop are so important in setting a mood. “It dictates the vibe and feel of the space and fills the gaps to create a flow in the store. It puts people at ease and provides a soundtrack to the ritual of a coffee. It has to be the right song at the right volume.” They shared a story about a time when the speaker system was cut out for an hour and it was “the most awkward hour ever”. Of course, the playlist matters – and it varies depending on the sun. “In the morning people need a gentle nudge, by the weekend the sun is out, everyone is a bit happier and our staff wants something to boogie to whilst they’re making hundreds of coffee.” Classics on the Nola speakers include Window by Still Woozy, Eugene by Arlo Parks, and Pink + White by Frank Ocean. On the similarities between the creative process of designing a coffee shop and curating an album, the Vander-Wests share their experiences, “in both processes, you are driven by an overall big feeling, but very focused on the details,” they said, “We have spent hours trying to find the perfect synth sound and hours trying to position the word NOLA on a cup.” The joy and the rewards are in the details. “It’s also strangely similar in the way that you make an album and it’s not yours anymore; it belongs to the listener – NOLA now belongs to the Peckham locals.”
Image Courtesy of WatchHouse
As creators, they are facilitating everyone else’s emotions and providing a soundtrack to their lives. The main differences between coffee and music link back to perhaps the preferences of the people. “Even if we don’t particularly like a mocha, we still have to try and serve the best one we can,” then when talking about music, “We’d never release a song we didn’t like though!” Their top recommendations for NOLA include the Ethiopian Buku espresso made by Head Barista Kyumin, or the Columbian El Carmen batch brew. “Also order a pastrami sandwich, a waffled cinnamon bun, a slice of carrot cake for later and put them in one of our ‘Don’t Cry Over Spilt Milk’ tote bags.”
Meanwhile, out in London’s famous Bermondsey Street, WatchHouse – a popular stop for Oh Wonder – honors a community of coffee lovers in a bright-designed space. Community Manager Faye Mitchell shared her notes on the importance of music in a coffee shop. “Experience for both customers and the team in a coffee shop is super important, and music plays a big part of that,” she told us, “For the team, it is part of expressing the identity of the café and keeping the ambiance welcoming and interesting. For customers, it is another layer of experience to connect with and enjoy.” The London coffee scene is so passionate and driven by community spirit. “There’s lots of creativity too; people take chances on projects, ideas, and collaborations that take a lot of courage and curiosity, meaning the culture in London is always evolving in new and exciting ways.”
Oh Wonder’s new album 22 Make will be released July 22, 2022.
This article is from our interview feature on Oh Wonder available to read in print. Get your limited edition copy here.
NEW YORK AND SAN FRANCISCO BAY. Asian inclusivity is becoming more prominent on the big screen, as artists with East-West backgrounds reflect more on their own culture and identity. We speak with two Asian-American comic book artists, Bernard Chang and Bobby Rubio, on stories of their childhood, heritage, and culture through the arts.
Grossing over US$29 million at the box office on its first day, Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings became an immediate breakthrough for Asian representation in comic movies. The superhero plot showcased Chinese culture through mythology and language in ways that hadn’t yet been interpreted in Hollywood.
Growing up, Bernard Chang, a comic book artist who works with Marvel Comics and DC, says that when he immigrated to America from Taiwan at age six, “There weren’t a lot of Asian-American characters in television, movies, or books.”
Bobby Rubio, a Filipino-American artist from San Diego, holds the same opinion. The animator, who now works with Paramount Pictures, made his directorial debut in 2019 during his time at Pixar with SparkShorts’ Float. The short film follows the relationship between a Filipino father and his son, who carries unusual powers, a metaphor for his Autism. The film has garnered over 25 million views on YouTube after its wide release as a signal to the importance of representation.
Image Courtesy of Bobby Rubio
The success of Rubio’s Float diversifies Asian characters on screen. When he initially took the project, Rubio designed the main character as Caucasian because he thought it was what the market would want to see. Luckily, Jillian Liebert, the story manager of Float, questioned Rubio on his decision, saying, “How is your son going to feel when he looks up on the screen? And those characters are white?” He changed the characters to reflect his reality. Now, Rubio is keen on creating more Asian characters with his own series of Filipina comic leads in Neighborhood Legend, a superhero who uses the traditions of Eskrima to fight the native Filipino martial arts.
The journey to becoming successful comic book artists didn’t come easy. For Bernard Chang, who has always been a comic book fan and loved drawing from a young age, went to Pratt Institute in New York but chose to study architecture. He initially had doubts about pursuing a career as an artist, partly due to his traditional parents, explaining, “My parents would understand architecture a little bit more than being an artist.” Rubio adds “Our parents wanted us to be engineers, doctors, lawyers, and nurses – the arts wasn’t what they were pushing for.”
Nevertheless, Chang didn’t give up pursuing his dream and eventually flourished under New York’s dynamic network of creatives and comics, speaking to as many industry natives as possible from bars to school networks. Chang examples success after his breakthrough 1993 comic series debut with a lead Asian-American male character, in The Second Life of Doctor Mirage. His character breaks the conventional image of Asian males as a “lover not a fighter” outside the kung-fu typecast.
Image Courtesy of Bernard Chang
This is far from how careers in the arts are now positively perceived, their childhood in the 70s/80s held different taboos. Stemming from traditional Asian ideology, and a need for ‘stable careers’, there were not many famous Asian artists in Western media at that time to take inspiration from. Many Asian diaspora parents who came to the States were often looking for the “American Dream”, and so-called ‘artists’ weren’t the most promising occupation.
On the lack of recognition for Asian-American talents instead, he met them designing behind the scene, after he “started looking into history.” He discovered, “one of Disney’s earliest animators was an Asian-American, an artist who designed a lot of the characters that we grew up watching in the movies. None of us knew that, right?” To bring more Asian representation into the creative industry, “A lot of times you have to be even better than everyone else by a couple of times to break in.” A drive for the creative doesn’t stop, as hopes for more Asian representation appear on-screen and behind the scenes continue with new releases like Pixar’s Turning Red, Michelle Yeoh in Everything Everywhere All at Once, and Academy Award-winning Parasite from Korea.
This article is from our interview feature on Bernard Chang and Bobby Rubio available to read in print. Get your limited edition copy here.
TENERIFE. Sea rescue missions are a pinnacle humanitarian effort that continues today. Where rescue vessels, yachts, and boats carrying medical staff, doctors, psychologists, and some odd volunteers take to the bordering towns of Sicily, the Canary Islands, and Malta in search of tiny boats carrying refugees and migrants. Refugee boats leave North Africa in the hopes of being rescued, taken to safety and brought to a safer life on European shores.
For many migrants, the struggle started in 2015 with civil unrest spreading across Syria and Libya. An estimated one million people have been suspected to have crossed the Central Mediterranean Sea by boat. Since the beginning of the global pandemic in 2020, the migrant boats are not slowing down, and as border controls tighten on the coast of Italy — sea routes, as they are known by local non-government organizations from the Med to Italy, Greece, and Spain have changed. Refugees are seeking asylum by crossing the waters of the Atlantic Ocean to Gran Canaria. A vastly more dangerous and unprotected route than before, with harsh weather conditions and pirates to add.
The transit between the continents of Africa and the Middle East to Europe has always been a space for mobility and resettlement. In the past, many migrant boats would be fleeing from war, persecution, or conflict in their hometowns. The majority of refugees and migrants take off from the coasts of Libya, Turkey, Egypt, and Morocco — coming from the nations of Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Somalia, and Nigeria. The major port destinations, in their eyes, are Valencia, Sicily, Malta, and the Canary Islands.
We spoke to volunteers, Nathalie Suthor an investigative journalist and Thomas Nuding Managing Director of Search and Rescue for All Humans (SARAH) a non-profit sea rescue operations team and boat. The two have been on active missions to rescue refugees in both the Mediterranean and the Atlantic over the last five years. The main goal of SARAH is to build and run rescue boats, operate small medical clinics, and supply life vests to refugees.
Ahkim 19 – SOS Mediterranee – 2018 – Mediterranean Sea
To create a new conversation between the many reporters, volunteers, and rescue groups we brought on Kenny Karpov, a contemporary photographer that documented the scenes from 2014-2019 as a way to report on the issues that have fallen out of the spotlight.
In the following pages, Karpov photographs his volunteer experiences helping refugees at sea alongside snippets from our conversations with volunteers Suthor and Nuding.
Thomas Nuding, Managing Director of Search and Rescue for All Humans (SARAH):
“[Refugees] can only hope to be found by an aircraft or by another ship. It’s just a small wooden boat with one engine. Sometimes they have two engines, a bigger one, and a spare engine, but normally they only have one engine. If the engine breaks, they can only pray that they are found, otherwise, they will die.”
Wooden boat – 400 + refugees – rescue – 2016
“During the journey, different things can happen. In spring, the seawater can be at 13 to 15-celsius degrees, which is very cold. If people stay in the water for over one hour, they may get hypothermia. Also, if people stay on the boats without drinking water, their bodies can lose a massive amount of water. Moreover, some people who get seasick for very long times, will also lose a lot of water. People from the detention centers may also have knife wounds, gun wounds, psychological problems, and infectious diseases, especially COVID now.”
“I can’t forget when there was a pregnant lady on a vessel who asked me to send her to the doctor. I can’t imagine how bad the situation in their country was, that this vessel was even safer than the land in their country. I think it’s a human necessity to help these people.”
Ibrahim 17 – On board Topaz Respnder – MOAS – 2017 – Mediterranean Sea
Natalie Suthor, Investigative Journalist:
“[Rescue Boats] have seen people drowning in front of them or suffering from gun wounds. Refugees in bad situations, especially the women coming from the Libyan camps. When a person who lives in a civilized society knows about all of these problems, we want to help them. Therefore, the people at SARAH put a lot of effort into this small NGO.”
“People are coming from everywhere in Africa. Sometimes we met a guy fleeing from Pakistan, trying to go to Europe. So they are from the whole world. People are moving to try to find a place where they can earn enough money to send it back to their family or just to start a better life.”
late night celebration – Heading to Italy – SOS Mediterranee – 2017 – Mediterranean Sea
This article is from our interview feature on Nathalie Suthor and Thomas Nuding available to read in print. Get your limited edition copy here.
SINGAPORE. The concept of utopia was first coined in 1516 by Sir Thomas More in his book Utopia and later opened the floodgates for the rest of the world. Then, in 1998 Aldous Huxley published his novel Brave New World, which further sparked conversation around the idea of utopia with dystopian controversies as a story about futuristic societies and the dangers of over-development. Virtual worlds in gaming became a natural testing ground for the concept in games like Assassin’s Creed and Rainbow 6 Siege.
For instance, these games allow freedom for online players to interact socially, share user-generated content and engage with environments in juxtaposition with real-world references. In fact, virtual reality, first-player and metaverse games have evolved drastically since the beginning of the millennium, where the early score or objective-based examples like SimCity (1980) and Grand Theft Auto III (2001) are replaced by freeform games such as Roblox (2006) and Minecraft (2011).
Dubbed as “the best game of all time”, Minecraft has now garnered over 140 million players worldwide. The unconstrained capacity to share resources and visual totems, self-govern and collaborate towards the creation of desirable communes is a fantastical interpretation of utopia.
Interesting, how ideas and their exploration manifest, Minecraft exemplifies Generation Z’s methods of navigating the philosophy of utopia. The self-building or journey game’s foundational goal is to quite literally create your own utopia, and incredible freedom in how one can approach the utopian goal would be and insofar of what utopia would serve. What unfolds are modern microcosms for navigating travel, time and place both as a concept and in practical terms. We can visualize the wonder of the pursuit of perfection and perhaps also the ramifications. This is echoed with Singaporean professional gamer Lunarmetal, Glen Suryaspautra,
“To me, a utopia would be a place where my values and ideals can be reflected, accepted and shared by everyone inside… I am also of the mindset that a utopia for one can be a dystopia for another.”
It’s easy to get caught up in the ideas of wonder and grandeur but society is not simply a one-size-fits-all. When thinking of a perfect world we must keep in mind the horrors that come with the chase of utopia. To Paul Fu, Content Director at Ubisoft Singapore for games like Assassin’s Creed, utopia is, “really an unachievable goal. An honorable goal — but perhaps an insurmountable one.” Good stories to him thrive off conflict, “As such, most portrayals of utopian societies in fiction are used as a form of dramatic contrast.”
Such extraordinary natures of gaming, aroused the interest of digital media researcher Sophia Fang to run an ethnographic research project to explore the behaviors of players in a private server, in which expert players invited are asked to construct communal utopia of their choice. Fang discovered traits of introversion and extroversion appearing, for the former building alone as a form of escapism was the main driver and for the latter building in team servers was a tool to reinforce friendships.
Around the same time as the COVID-19 pandemic, heated debates over the lasting effects of technological advancement in post-millennial society have surfaced. Although the ubiquitous surveillance system keeping public health in check might remind us of the dystopian totalitarian technocracy in George Orwell’s 1984. On the flip side, incorporating utopian video games into education, might be a fresh solution to the world’s problems, if we believe our future leaders could thrive on such creativity and co-operative utopian values exemplified in their favorite games.
This article is from Paradigm Haus’ Utopia in Game Design feature available to read in print. Get your limited edition copy here.
A Psychedelic Utopia in Gaming?
TEXT // Samuel Wu
OPINION. Today, the conceptual idea of Utopia within society is rooted in the wide-spread use of psychedelic drugs like LSD and Psilocybin.
Inspired by Huxley’s final novel Island (1962), psychologist Timothy Leary and spiritual guru Richard Alpert conducted several university-approved experiments with psychedelics in the sixties, where test subjects reported profound realizations in spirituality and purpose. When LSD was made illegal by the US government in 1968, psychedelics made their way underground and continued to impact the “Peace and Love” hippie movements of the time.
The influence of psychedelics began to seep into the art and music scenes. One, was the free distribution of the iconic “Orange Sunshine LSD” created by The Brotherhood of Eternal Love throughout the country. Their effort was an ill-fated bid to end private property ownership through enlightenment.
While Nixon’s “War on Drugs” had effectively cracked down the spread of psychedelics, footprints of the countercultural movement continued to carry over into the more recent utopian experiments. This time around, though, with the development of brick-and-mortar communes as Freetown Christiania and Seasteading Institute appears to be either limiting or far-fetched, virtual worlds in gaming have naturally become a favorable testbed for the progressive ideals.
All images courtesy of Ubisoft
This article is from Paradigm Haus’ Utopia in Game Design feature available to read in print. Get your limited edition copy here.
