Hybridity is metaphorical. It seems to be biological, yet cultural. Hybridity is about a new formation (like a new creature) refigured from different elements/medium (of different DNA). We can certainly recognise part of its features from where they inherited, yet it is something beyond. Hybridity in Collaboration is about integrating and organising diversity. It is a process of becoming something unknown.
In advocating such process of becoming, we foster the idea of intermedia as an ideal approach in the collaborative venture. We emphasize on the conceptual fusion of separated media, and also to incorporate media/disciplines outside the established parameters of the arts.
The most exciting and also the most challenging part of my work is on ways in facilitating artists to dialogue with each others that can go beyond their specialized medium/discipline and creative paradigms with cross-fertilization of ideas, and to see them progressively weaving up the work and the narrative in an integral way.
Through intermedia collaboration, we endeavor to work across boundaries of media, disciplines, and art genres, and to broaden art experience for spectators in a more interdisciplinary and inter-sensory dimension. Experiential becomes one of our underscored concerns in our initiated productions
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Hybridity is not only in the heart of our productions, orleanlaiproject as a production unit is also constantly evolving in its capacity and shape; from project management to introducing and organsing productions with distinctive cross-media characteristics, from audio-visual and media art to music and dance. In recent years, orleanlaiproject has taken an even more proactive role, in initiating, curating and producing collaborative productions, and involving in artistic development with artists in projects, to explore new possibility of presentation formats and fuse the boundary of art forms and mediums.
In 2014, Orlean was invited to curate an exhibition – Zoo as Metaphor at Oi! (Oil Street Art Space). The project was an attempt to adopt an exhibition space for an experiential journey of narrative and performance. In the New Vision Arts Festival 2018, she has collaborated with the creative team (of Au Wah-yan, Steve Hui, Vee Leong, Kingsley Ng, Man Mei-to, Kensa Hung, Wong hung-fei and more) and has undertaken another expedition at the Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences with Zoo as Metaphor (2). Moved on from the objects and collectables on display in the first edition, the new expedition focused on PEOPLE, embarking on the "bizzare" in contemporary situations... The production has evolved from a crossed form of exhibition and performance into an experiential journey of social experiment.
In 2017, she curated an intermedia collaborative performance, Claustrophobia with Vee Leong, Tam Wai-ping and Yuen Cheuk-wa, which experimented with integrating installation, sonic writing, and soundscape into a parallel narrative performance. In another collaborative project - Songs of Portrait (2018) with Nerve and Cheuk Cheung, which documentary expanded from the screen to live performance on stage, to something beyond opera, illustrating performers' lives and practices from traditions of Kunqu, Noh, and Opera.
In 2017-18, Orlean was also commissioned to curate two outdoor projects: Circular Reflection (at Salisbury Garden) of participatory installation and experiential performance by Hung Keung and Alex Cheung; and Swim Walking, a series of art journeys in the Central / Sheung Wan district. In the start of 2019, she also curated a site-responsive performance series – Wild is the Grass, which was held at the Prison Yard of Tai Kwun, under the commission of HKADC.
Orlean was Asian Cultural Council Fellowship recipient of 2016.