The Ventriloquists are back.

Ventriloquists speak without moving their lips, yet their voices are clearly heard. The ventriloquist is a paradox. S/he communicates in the liminal zone. Showing or telling, they invite imagination and attentiveness. Soundings over themes and messages.

Created in 2020 by artist-scholar Dr. Linda C.H. Lai to show the artistic experiments of BA students in Narrative Strategies (a core course for BACM students at SCM), the 2021 edition returns with 36 works at the Singing Waves Gallery. We want to open up the discussion of why narrative concepts are central to artistic creation in a data-conscious milieu.

“The Ventriloquists: Thinking Narratively 2021” is a sight-and-sound assemblage, a constellation of video dreamwork, thought paths as collage and montage sequences, visual analysis of well-known moving image works as pictograms, generative video and creative writing, and prototypes of game worlds…

Each work is a world of its own, together they form a carnivalesque clash of countenances.