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Two cities, one event

Spittoon started as a simple poetry night on Baochao Hutong in 2015, a way to bring people from different continents together through translation and good company. By 2019 it had grown into a multi-city organisation across China with an international chapter in Gothenburg, Sweden. The Shimmering Wall was the moment those two worlds met in real time.

On Sunday April 28th, 2019, Spittoon Beijing and Spittoon Gothenburg staged a simultaneous webcast. Both communities performed to each other through a large projector screen, 9pm in Beijing and 3pm in Gothenburg, with acts in succession from each city. Poetry, music, and mixed media crossing twelve time zones live.

How it came together

In 2017, Chilean-born filmmaker and poet Matias Ruiz-Tagle, formerly Spittoon Beijing’s fiction event host, left China and relocated to Gothenburg. He took Spittoon with him. By April 2019 the Gothenburg chapter was preparing for its seventh monthly event, with an audience fascinated by what was happening in China and a Beijing audience equally intrigued by what Matias had built in Sweden. The Shimmering Wall was the natural next step.

What Beijing brought to the wall

The Beijing programme centred on Spittunes, Spittoon’s music and poetry collaboration format in which a band or musical artist is paired with a poet to create a special piece inspired by the poet’s work. Three acts performed on the night.

Daniel Rothwell and Jumi Bello

Musician Daniel Rothwell, lover of spontaneous noise and experimental collaboration, paired with poet Jumi Bello, who had published two poetry collections by the age of twenty-one and lived across North America, Taiwan, and beyond. When she is not writing she teaches high school history. Washington DC is home.

Anthony Tao, Liane Halton, and Nina Dillenz

Poet and editor Anthony Tao, whose work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, The Cortland Review, Frontier, and others, collaborated with musician Liane Halton, a classically trained guitarist and composer who moves between contemporary world, classical, and jazz styles in Beijing. The performance incorporated an animation show by Nina Dillenz, adding a visual dimension to the poetry and music collaboration.

Chinese poetry in translation

Beijing also brought Chinese poetry in translation to the wall, performed by Zuo Fei, a Beijing-based university English teacher and poet who runs a WeChat platform introducing foreign poetry to Chinese readers. She has been actively involved in translation since 2016 and holds an MA from Beijing Foreign Studies University.

What Gothenburg brought to the wall

The Gothenburg programme offered a selection of poetry performance and mixed media from the Swedish literary underground, showcasing the distinctive experimental character that Spittoon Gothenburg had developed under Matias over its first two years.

Originally published April 2019 on the Spittoon WeChat channel.