After 5 years of experience between Beijing and Zurich the summer workshop called „Common Stage“ took place in Hong Kong for the first time. A total number of 35 students were participating mainly from Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) and Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (HKAPA), but also from additional art institutions from Hong Kong, China, Taiwan and Singapore. The students were composed of various art and design disciplines like directing, performing, dancing, dramaturgy, curating, music, fine arts, media arts, graphic design, interaction design, scenography, art education, publishing or art management. A culturally and disciplinary mixed team of lecturers supported the students during the process.

Starting
The first week of the workshop served to approach the main topic called “To live a happy life” and to identify relevant questions and problems. With guided on-topic tours we got to know the different living environments of Hong Kong, from rather poor and traditional districts to the globalized skyscraper areas, combined with different lectures and workshops of renowned artists and professors mostly related to topics of art and the everyday life. In the beginning the classes took place at “Connecting Space Hong Kong”, a generous, ground-level location rented by ZHdK that can be opened towards a lively street. This unusual location generated a productive atmosphere and the urbanely surrounding conveyed a feeling of being at the pulse of time.

At the end of the first week we have built five culturally and disciplinary mixed groups consisting of 6-8 students each and focussing on a specific theme within the main topic. Their task for the following three weeks was to explore their topics, dealing and experimenting with questions of cultural and disciplinary traditions and values, to finally develop and present their experiments to the public in a self-defined artistic format including all group members and their disciplines. Also during this period thematically and theoretical inputs from various fields were included twice a week, as well as an excursion to the gambling city Macao.

Getting intense
From the second week the students were able to use classrooms, workshops, dance studios, rehearsal stages and other infrastructure at HKAPA. After a usually rather euphoric first phase of getting to know each other, a more difficult phase followed where disciplinary and culturally differences, approaches and artistic methods became more obvious and sometimes seemed unbridgeable.

Nevertheless all groups kept a high intensity of work, a curious and positive attitude in developing their projects, trying to find solutions in a demanding and complex context. Compared to the workshops in Beijing it was interesting that students from rather globalized cities like Hong Kong, Singapore or Zurich felt less foreign among themselves and the cultural differences seemed more subtle whereas the task to work in a cross-disciplinary groups and develop open artistic formats was dominant.

Only after a certain time contentual discussions about values or traditions became more evident and interesting disputes about “home”, “identity”, “superstition” or “getting old” emerged. In general the artistic process has reached a high and original standard and the groups finally presented their results successfully to the public during two evenings at various locations at HKAPA, ZHdK project space and a sweets shop in Kowloon.

Going further
In the timeframe of 2015 – 2017 “Common Stage” will be further developed into a semester programme. Our goal is to launch a pioneering transcultural and cross-disciplinary educational format for graduate students of all art and design disciplines. Selected students from all involved partner institutions will have the possibility to study for one semester within this specific programme, which will be based mainly in Hong Kong. The summer workshop served as an excellent basis to gain first experiences in Hong Kong and with new partners. We are looking forward to continue and intensify these collaborations.

Once again thanks to all participants of Common Stage 2014: students for their hard work and spirit, all involved institutions, faculty, artists and experts for their support and expertise. It was a “happy” landing in Hong Kong!

Trailer and Documentation
As you will find a lot of pictures from all group processes and final presentations on our blog (pictures), we have also worked on a video trailer showing a summary of the final presentations. Please consider that the trailer is not following a linear narration, but shows various excerpts to convey a general feeling of the overall presentations. Thanks a lot to Michael Bodenmann, Tan Lijie for the video compositing and editing, Milk and her team for some of the footage and Simon Dietersdorfer for the soundtrack.

Watch the trailer here:

A special thank to Ann Mbuti who was responsible for this project blog and dedicated a lot of additional work in the last months to finalize it.