Howl Yuan: Thought's On A Spinning World

Our guest curator Howl Yuan has written this blog to talk about the impact of Covid-19 on this world and how we respond as human beings as well as creators and makers of art, with reference to his ‘Witness’ Programme!

We witness all the madness around us, we stand up and take actions.

We witness the chaos of our homeland through distance, we feel frustrated.

We witness, whenever and however, then we react, that’s how things matters to us.

Witness sometimes is considered the most passive way of engaging, but it’s how we start to understand things surrounding us and the rest of the world, then we form thoughts and take action. When we witness? How we witness? and Who witness? …

10th March 2020, I wrote this as the intro for the Migration Matters Festival. At that time everything was on its way, the practice was developing, the program was forming, the narrative was articulating. Then, as we all know, coronavirus, epidemic, pandemic, lockdown, social distance…all of these hit us heavily and suddenly, and throw us into the dark tunnel. Months ago we may think it is something happened far away, and now it affects us in everyday life. This constant changing circumstance makes me reflect, the witness is definitely not enough for us now.

We are human beings before we become art makers.