Liane Lang

Roots (or how to be in nature)

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Since 2023 artist Liane Lang and dancer and choreographer Wency Lam have collaborated on a video projection and performance piece that is constantly evolving. Performed first in 2023 at the MEM Festival in Bilbao with live original music by Michael Chee Man Tang, it has since been shown at the Wirksworth Festival, including dancer Ronan Cardoza.

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Thinking each about their own sense of uprootedness and what roots and home mean, each of the performers has a different take on the meaning of the work. Wency and Michael both relocated to Newham from Hong Kong in a bid to escape expanding autocracy and find creative freedom. Ronan came to London from the USA to study and Liane has lived in London for 25 years, leaving Germany at a young age. All are working on new roots, on building home.

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In the iteration of Roots shown at Wirksworth Festival, Liane has created footage from a residency she undertook on a ship to Antarctica in 2022. The idea of being out of place, a foreign body, was epitomised by this experience. The loneliness and disconnection of this almost humanfree landscape and the observation of climate destruction wreaked across vast distances, led her to reach out for collaborators.

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Wency included the performance in her 2023 Arts Council Project HOME. A series of performances on the notion of migration and the sacrifices of one generation for another. 

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Michael Tang has composed original sound and music and performed using digital as well as traditional chinese instruments, Chinese Flute, Erhu and percussion, exploring place and origin, strangeness and connectedness through a rich landscape of sound.