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A New Dimension for Poetry

In April 2019, Spittoon co-produced VPN, Visual Poetry Network, at the newly renovated Aotu Space gallery in Beijing. A one-off mixed media event bringing together poetry, visual art, live painting, film installation, and original music across four collaborative acts. Half of all ticket proceeds were donated to Sun Village charity.

The Acts

Nina Dillenz and Gregorio Soravito: limit:infinity

An immersive installation exploring the limits of comprehension, imagination, and memory. Entering a black box, guests were confronted with projections of jellyfish against an infinity mirror, a pair of parallel mirrors creating a series of reflections receding to infinity.

Gregorio Soravito studied architecture in Trieste before moving to Beijing in 2016, where he developed BE京jing, a street photography collection, and directed music videos including the official video for post-rock band Macondo. Nina Dillenz studied theatre, film, and media in Vienna, worked at the Austrian Cultural Forum in Beijing, and had exhibited video work at Red Gate Gallery and created stage projections at Penghao Theatre.

Anthony Tao, Liane Halton, Nina Dillenz, and 9Shang

Anthony Tao and Liane Halton performed selections from their poetry and music album The Last Tribe on Earth, featuring original poetry with compositions on classical guitar. Artist 9Shang interpreted the performance through live Chinese watercolour painting, while Nina Dillenz provided visual projections.

Anthony Tao is a poet and writer whose work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Borderlands, The Cortland Review, and other publications. Liane Halton graduated from Rhodes University in South Africa in classical guitar performance and composition, and was active in both the South African and Beijing music scenes.

Prince Spells and Jady Liu: Wasted Land

In Wasted Land, Jady Liu and Prince Spells imagined a post-apocalyptic world in the anthropocenic era, exploring networks, humans, and machines. Prince is a photographer and founder of The Partnering Firm. Jady Liu is a researcher of media art and associate visual editor of The Shanghai Literary Review.

Jaime Santirso, Matthew Byrne, and David Bond

A fusion of prog-rock and jazzy-Latin sound tracking with original music, accompanying spontaneous poetic prose written and performed in Spanish by Jaime Santirso. Matthew Byrne, Spittoon’s founder, performed as poet alongside David Bond on keys. Bond has been active in the Chinese music industry since 2010, performing and recording with acts including Feixu, Demerit, and Peking Floyd. Santirso, born in Gijón in 1990, published his debut collection Encuentro in 2018 and has reported on international politics for RNE, Spanish national radio.

Originally published April 2019 on the Spittoon WeChat channel. VPN was produced by Sushanna and co-produced by Spittoon.