DAYTRIP - Queer East

Festival 2026

DAYTRIP

Curated by
Bart Seng Wen Long, Yi Wang

Queer East hosts a special takeover at the ICA, featuring an all-day line-up of film, performance, and practice-based workshops culminating in a club night. Chasing the dizzying ecstasy of movement in all its eclectic potential, this experimental, multidisciplinary showcase will unfold throughout the venue, concocting a sensory mixed bill of bold sounds, moving image, and haptic intimacies.

In the theatre, Hong Kong-based dance company Unlock Dancing Plaza presents a double bill by Joseph Lee and Paula Wong, examining the body politics of spectatorship through playful subversion of everyday gestures. The line-up also features shibari artist hua hua, multidisciplinary artist Riven Ratanavanh, queer collective CD3 and experimental choreographer Osamu Shikichi, with each performance engaging with the errant vitality of queerness in their own inimitable way.

A looping shorts programme will display works by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Umi Ishihara, and Oat Montien, among others. Audiences can slip in and out of these scenes of filmic velocity in the cinema and witness counter-choreographic eruptions in the theatre throughout the day, traversing interconnected themes like the poetics of migration, trespassed borders, unfettered desiring and the necessity of movement for survival.

Audiences will be invited to explore shibari as a mindful and sensual practice through a workshop led by hua hua. This happens alongside a range of other cross-disciplinary workshops led by Pubis Project, Sun Park, Chiemi Shimada, Kayla Lui and Doreen Chan, spanning fantasy stamp-making, cosmotechnical filmmaking, life drawing that undermines established systems of gazing, and a dream-based cocktail mixer.

Building to a fiery, moonlit climax, we will shed skins and dance hard to the beats of Flow (海纳百川), a multidisciplinary club and performance programme curated by celebrated DJ-artist Sirui Chang (Princess Xixi).

PERFORMANCES AND LIVE ARTS

14:00 – 15:30 – Good Boy, Bad Girl by Paula Wong + Joseph Lee (Unlock Dancing Plaza)
17:30 – 18:00 – The Application by CD3 Project
18:00 – 18:40 – Crucified Stars on the Tongue by Osamu Shikichi
18:40 – 19:30 – Untitled by Riven Ratanavanh
19:30 – 20:30 – REANIMATED shibari performance by huahua and Kazumi
20:30 – 21:30 – Good Boy, Bad Girl Redux by Paula Wong + Joseph Lee (Unlock Dancing Plaza)

WORKSHOPS

14:30 – 17:30 – Collective Divination and Filmmaking by Sun Park and Chiemi Shimada
15:00 – 17:30 – Books in the Diasporic: Imaginary Habitats and Away ༄ by Pubis Project
15:00 – 17:30 -Language of Rope workshop by huahua
15:30 – 17:30 -Keep Staring: Life Drawing at the Theatre by Kayla Lui
20:00 & 22:00 – Sipping Dreams [小酌一夢] by Doreen Chan with Goh Wei Hao

FILMS
14:00 – 02:00 – Fast Crawl / Slow Draws (Looping moving image programme at Cinema 2)

RAVE
21:30 – 02:00 – FLOW 海纳百川 curated by Princess XiXi

Tickets

16 May 2026, 2:00 PM

Tickets available

ICA

Good Boy, Bad Girl

Artists
Joseph Lee & Paula Wong

Running time
1 hour mins

Good Boy, Bad Girl is a double bill of two solo performances examining the body politics of spectatorship. Working through regimes of conditioning, endurance and display, Wong and Lee foreground the body as something trained, exposed and consumed. Together, they ask how contemporary bodies are constructed and repaired ...

The Application

Artist
CD3 Project

The Application is a transdisciplinary performance piece that transforms the stage into a live laboratory to interrogate digital intimacy, consent, and power dynamics. The work begins in the "digital ether," using hookup apps and social media to recruit a male participant for a live negotiation of dominance and submiss...

Reanimated

By
hua hua & Kazumi

Channelling the season of spring, this Shibari performance will explore the themes of renewal, sensual awakenings and the early buds of intimacy.

Crucified Stars on the Tongue

Artist
Osamu Shikichi

This performance draws on “舌読 / Zetsudoku,” a practice Shikichi encountered in their recent choreographic research. Zetsudoku is a technique developed by people with Hansen’s disease in Japan after World War II. After being confined to isolation wards and losing their sight and the sensation in their finger...

Collective Divination and Filmmaking

What if filmmaking could create a forest? This hands-on workshop explores cosmotechnical storytelling through collective tarot reading and intuitive filmmaking and is led by Sun Park and Chiemi Shimada. Cosmotechnics is philosopher Yuk Hui's idea that every culture develops its own technologies through its unique re...

Keep Staring: Life Drawing at the Theatre

This is a life drawing session with the explicit aim of subverting the role of audience and performer. Observe to be perceived. Draw and be drawn. What narratives will emerge out of the queer gaze? In the meta spirit of interactive theatre and Terayama Shuuji, it’s time for your butts to leave the audience seat and f...

The Language of Rope

Shibari (the Japanese art of rope bondage) has often been described as a language - with ropes, bodies and breath instead of words. However, it is often hard to let go of verbal communication when it comes to safety and consent. In this workshop, hua hua will guide you on the language of rope exploring how to create a ...

Sipping Dreams

Project by Doreen Chan
Curated by Goh Wei Hao

In Sipping Dreams [小酌一夢] (2023), participants receive a cocktail crafted from their responses to a questionnaire about their recent dream and sleep patterns. With their cocktail in hand, participants are invited to mingle with others, allowing their dream — along with the memories, affects, and desires they c...

Books in the Diasporic: Imaginary Habitats and Away ༄

Join Pubis Project in this writing and making workshop to create a book stamp from scratch for a publication that has travelled with you across space and time. Participants will catalogue a publication that speaks to their diasporic experience and design a book stamp that represents an imaginary habitat for this public...

Fast Draws / Slow Crawl

Curated by
Bart Seng Wen Long

Two young labourers in a moving truck are filming themselves. A voyeur tracks down motionless monuments. A strange fairy emerges from a pinwheel. A person mutates into a bus. Parsing new works across eternal themes. Ramwong dancing with pins of neon green. Invitational gestures from a gloved hand beckons only dissimula...

FLOW

Flow 海纳百川 is a multidisciplinary club and performance programme curated by Sirui Chang (Princess Xixi) as part of Queer East Festival's 2026 programme, exploring movement as both a physical act and a cultural force. Bringing together DJs, live performers, MCs, and movement artists, the event sits at the crossro...