Music/Theatre

Artist Jaffa Lam works with Ong Yong Lock and Hakgwai this time to turn the theatre to a laundromat that washes not dirty clothes, but your fatigued soul. Borrowing from Lam’s very own experiences, the installation is centred around social issues and the theme of life.

Lam’s mind is often occupied by issues such as identity, as well as the increasing social turmoil in Hong Kong. Dealing with the associated negative emotions is just like washing a dingy white shirt: no matter how hard you try, you can never restore its “whiteness” – and its “purity”.

You’ll see the sight and hear the sound of washing and drying: some people are trying to scrape dirt off themselves, some pretending that the dirt’s got nothing to do with them. You’re the only one who doesn’t have to be part of this, so don’t you worry about getting wet – all you have to do is to open your senses. Clothing is our second layer of skin, something that covers and protects us, as much as it conceals and disguises us.

During this washing process, we are placed together with our clothes in a laundry net made of cords that inter-lace reality and fiction, floating freely in the vastness of liquid detergent.

You can smell a soft and sweet scent of fabric softeners in this laundromat, but if you pay attention, there’s also this pungent odor of detergents that just won’t go away. Life is perhaps just as intricate and complicated, but also full of possibilities: to fight and flee, or to reconcile and let go – it’s all up to you.