Shenzhen (02/17): The Triple J Cafe Exhibition

Sunday evening was the Triple J Cafe event in Shenzhen, featuring photos by Ivy, Ohm, Chris and Berton with music by Dirt Star.  You can check out the event listing here.

I went up earlier in the day with Cass, who is visiting from the Bay Area with her mom.  I'll save the details from hanging out with her for another blog, as this blog is more about the event itself.

We arrived there around 6:30 to a table full of food and some familiar faces.  Ivy and her husband were there, as was Savvy, Reina, Dirt and a few others. 

I saw Jia Jia there (the proprietor of the Triple J), but she was wearing an Alivenotdead hat so it sort of threw me for a loop.  Usually artists have the hats, and I knew that there were only a few artists in Shenzhen, none of them female, so my gut reaction was "She must be someone from Hong Kong whom I haven't met yet" even though she looked very familiar. 

If she didn't have the hat on I think I would have remembered her right away (I met her once, briefly, on New Year's Eve) but I asked for her name and then felt dumb when I realized who she was.   Duh.  Now she probably thinks I have zero memory.

Anyway, after a few more minutes Berton, Stephen and Stephen's friend who's name I never remember (because I have zero memory) showed up.  Ohm couldn't make it as he was in Bangkok. 

We had a good time hanging out and chatting with folks.  I had a nice conversation with Susanna Zhu, who is working at a museum/exhibition place in Shenzhen.  She's hoping to attend grad school in the U.S. to study to become a museum currator.  Her and her husband were looking all fancy because they just had some family photos taken.

Dirt Star's perfrmance was pretty fun.  He did a set of about 5 or 6 songs.  During the performance he had a pedal on the ground and kept clicking it with his foot.  Of course we all assumed that he was using it to select music or to change effects on what he was playing (his music was pre-arranged on the computer with his own guitar accompaniament and singing).  It looked like he was triggering music to start with his pedal.

He kept looking at it like it was broken in between songs.  He would bend over and push the button and it looked like the pedal was giving him some problems.  I was racking my head wondering what sort of things in his music the pedal could be controlling.

About halfway through one of his last songs he bent over and clicked the button looking at it like the thing had broken.  Then he unplugged it and tossed it aside and kept playing.  That's when I realized that he had been playing with us the whole time.  The pedal wasn't being used for anything except to mess with our heads.  Pretty brilliant, I thought.

Here's some clips I took.

After the music it was time to take off back to Hong Kong so Cass and I caught the subway to LoWu and then crossed over to the MTR.

One treat while I was on the bus from Kowloon to Tung Chung -- I got to see Ryan Hui's new music video on the bus.  Pretty neat to see the alivenotdead logo while I'm riding the bus.