Wounded Healer (Without Dependency)
- Julian Hou
- Prince Nifty
- Eddy Wang
- Fan Wu
- Amy Gottung
- Kasper Feyrer
- Michael Joseph Loncaric
Western Front is pleased to present a performance by artists-in-residence Julian Hou, Prince Nifty, Eddy Wang, and Fan Wu, in collaboration with Kasper Feyrer, Amy Gottung, and Michael Joseph Loncaric.
The evening will feature songs by Eddy Wang from his earnestcore band Ira Dot, a solo set by Prince Nifty of music ranging from UFO ambient to full-blown jungle, and a performance by Fan Wu of a new poem with backing by an ensemble of players.
The concert will double as the launch of Wu’s debut album touch The Ten Thousand Things without dependency (2023). Produced by Prince Nifty, the album takes its title from a mantra for a form of Enlightenment that’s simultaneously sensual and bereft of attachment.
About the Artists
Julian 伊 中 Hou is an artist based in Vancouver, Canada. His multidisciplinary practice includes the fostering and organizing of productions through a fluid collaborative art, audio, publishing and apparel entity (Second Spring), as well as an ongoing artistic practice that involves the accumulation of new skills and application of personal symbolic invocations, collective meaning, and original methods of divination that probe the darker recesses of psychic awareness. His stalwart mediums are drawing, sculpture, songwriting, album production, and clothing as art.
Prince Nifty (a.k.a. Matt Smith) is a producer and musician based in Toronto, Canada. His practice involves building immersive spatialized sound design for live theatre and dance, and composing work of various textures and approaches.
Eddy Wang is an interdisciplinary artist based in Philadelphia, United States and Toronto, Canada. His work eclectically mediates the relationship between theoretically-informed experimental cinema and passionate songs for human connection. His interests include Chinese gestures, drone music, indie pop, and creative programming. Wang is half of the indie band Ira Dot and is a part of the Toronto Experimental Translation Collective. He is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Pennsylvania.
Fan Wu is an performer, writer, translator, and organizer based in Toronto, Canada. His practice involves studying knowledge traditions and engaging with wisdom traditions, namely Daoism, and is guided by a fascination with the expansiveness of such archetypes as “the wounded healer” and “the indulgent monk.” In his work and life, he asks: how can mythic ur-narratives help us to integrate our own suffering into transformation? And, how can we rearrange the forms of social life so it’s conducive to open channels of change? He is a Pisces/Pisces Rising, born into yin fire, and—of all the major arcana—most drawn to Temperance.
Kasper Feyrer is an artist born in lək̓ʷəŋən territory, and based on the unceded territories of the səlilwətaɬ, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Vancouver, Canada). They root their practice in an embodied engagement with celluloid filmmaking and sculpture, with emphasis on the body’s relationship to these media. Feyrer has an interest in queer ecologies, which relates to this experimentation in aiding and altering perception. They often link their film to their sculptures by employing “practical film effects”: physical objects and non-digital special effects made for the verisimilitude of the camera.
Amy Gottung is a creative director and producer whose work focuses on transdisciplinary forms. As a researcher and consultant, Gottung builds strategy and exchange for social-purpose systems, organizations, and communities. She has founded multiple cross-sector interventions in support of alternative cultural scenes and spaces. In addition to her work across media, culture, research, and writing, Gottung is a Western classically-trained singer and music educator.
Michael Joseph Loncaric is an educator based in Vancouver, Canada who teaches at a local college. His teaching practice tends towards the isolation of cultural impasses—prejudices about intelligence, drugs or sex—that, in conversation, serve as energizing points of interest.
Accessibility
The Grand Luxe Hall is located on the second floor of Western Front, which is accessed by a flight of 26 stairs. While plans for a full building upgrade to facilitate access for wheelchair and scooter users are still underway, events in the Grand Luxe Hall are made available virtually via high-quality livestream (see link above). Further details about accessibility at Western Front can be found here.
Acknowledgements
Presented in partnership with Second Spring and with the support of the Government of Canada and SOCAN Foundation.
Western Front is a non-profit
artist-run centre in Vancouver.
We acknowledge the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations as traditional owners of the land upon which Western Front stands.