ESEA unseen: Happenstance

Line-up
2.30pm: DJ set angeladotwav
4.30pm: Jett Kwong
5.30pm: DJ set Andrew Hung
6.30pm: Will Pham and the VLC Band
8pm: DJ set Andrew Hung
9pm: Mantawoman
9.45pm: DJ set Andrew Hung

angeladotwav is a musician and producer who has played with bands including Yama Warashi, Josefin Öhrn and The Go! Team, and also works on composition and sound design for video and audio branding.

Jett Kwong is a vocalist, guzheng player, composer and actor. Her combination of the Chinese guzheng, vocal melodies and strings transports the listener into dreamy soundscapes deemed a ‘balm to the spirit’ (NPR). A poetic melding of languages and cultures largely inspired by her mixed heritage is bolstered by orchestral arrangements and an alt-pop sensibility. Jett was the recipient of the 2019 Kollaboration award.

Andrew Hung is a producer-artist known for his collaborations (F*ck Buttons, Beth Orton), film soundtracks (The Greasy Strangler, An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn) and his solo work (Realisationship, Devastations, Deliverance). Hung’s work with F*ck Buttons brought about three critically-acclaimed albums, headline stages at Glastonbury, Green Man and All Tomorrow’s Parties, and their music soundtracked key moments in the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony. Hung is currently working on the follow-up to the critically acclaimed Deliverance.

Will Pham and the VLC Band collaborate in a live performance of nostalgic songs by the VLC Band from Centre 151, a Hackney community centre set up in 1985, formerly known as the Community Centre for Refugees from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia (VLC). Evoking memories of the artist’s childhood experiences of attending events at the centre, Pham reads a text which connects his experiences with verbatim extracts from interviews with Mr Lai, lead guitarist of the VLC Band. The VLC Band is Dan Tran, Doc Ngo, Thanh Long, Frankie, Hung, Hùng, Quang, Ngọc Nga, Quyen.

Will Pham is a British-Vietnamese artist working in video, live performance, painting and socially engaged practice. His work explores intergenerational care, cultural inheritance, community building and refugee narratives within the UK. Will Pham was an Associate Lecturer at the Royal College of Art in 2023. He has been invited as visiting lecturer at Goldsmiths University, Chelsea College of Art and Royal College of Art. Solo exhibitions and commissions include Deptford X Commission, VMHS Legacy Project and Rokoko, Skelf.

Mantawoman 漫她我梦 is an artist and singer-songwriter from San Francisco, whose instrument is the yangqin. Interweaving traditional Chinese techniques with modern influences, which range from Brian Eno to Björk, Mantawoman’s psychedelic hypnopop songs explore themes of heartbreak, healing, and spiritual transcendence. She has toured internationally with Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, featured on GRAMMY-winning album Sing Me Home and performed on soundtracks for TV and film. She is co-founder of London music collective Tangram and has collaborated with iconic artists including Rhiannon Giddens, Kayhan Kalhor, Johnny Gandelsman, Vân-Ánh Võ and Luke Pritchard of The Kooks.

Join Kim Chin and Sue Man, two multidisciplinary artists from the ESEA community, for a day of activities and performances that conjure up contemporary memories with an ancestral twist.

The pair met through London’s creative-music-social circles during the early 2000s. Through organising and producing interventions fighting for intersectional social and climate justice, they reconnected with each other to use experimental textiles, conversations and social engagement as a vehicle to heal, connect, and build resistance.

By working with arts, learning and community networks, these experiences are assembled to create public facing events where people can come together, celebrate their experiences, and imagine spaces of cultural exchange that thrive beyond structures of colonial oppression.

This summer, we’re collaborating with a range of London-based collectives and organisations to curate the Riverside Stage in response to the theme of our season, You Belong Here, enabling these collaborators to welcome different audiences and recognise how they want and choose to belong here at the Southbank Centre.