This lecture performance by Natalie Lo Lai Lai will weave together recent and archival moving and still images, text, and music to offer a tangible experience of Hong Kong’s multifaceted landscape. Drawing from her experience as a researcher, artist, and farmer, she skillfully layers diverse media and narratives to perform a real-time essay film that blends personal experience and public discourse. Lo’s self-reflexive, philosophical, and non-didactic storytelling produces new constellations in which the performer, screen, and audience form a whole.

Throughout the performance, Lo will engage with the city’s ecology to unveil the hidden dynamics between human and non-human species. They become an allegory of her own negotiations with society and ultimately speak to the universal condition of being an individual within a multitude of groups. By looking at the world from the perspectives of flora and fauna, Resilient Echoes gives voice to the unspoken and offers a critical reflection on society’s marginalised. Lo’s long-term collaborator, composer and singer Wong Hin-yan, will perform alongside the artist with a selection of sonic live acts.

Natalie Lo Lai Lai (b. 1983, Hong Kong) is an artist, filmmaker, journalist, and farmer. She holds a BA and MFA from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and is currently a PhD candidate at the School of Creative Media of the City University of Hong Kong. Lo’s research and interests in food, farming, fermentation, surveillance, and meditation find expression in her writing, art making, and farming practice. Her work with fermentation practices parallels her artistic investigation of adaptation and resilience in urban ecosystems. She uses photography and moving images as a means to interact with nature. Her artworks have been exhibited internationally and are part of Dr. Uli Sigg's private collection and the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. In 2021, Lo was the recipient of the Gold Award in the Media Art Category at the 26th ifva Awards.