Matthew Byrne | Writer, Founder, Digital Marketer

An Intimate Installation

At the end of the hall, there is a message for you. The messenger does not see your face, nor you theirs — words leak out from a crack in the wall. The words may be whispered, they may be sung, they may even be in a language you speak. Carry your message into the night or return, and have it overwritten with another.

On 12th December 2019, as the opening event of the Spittoon MEGACITY series, Aotu Space gallery in Beijing hosted For Every Ear a Secret — a one-of-a-kind performance installation in which poets, fiction writers, and musicians took turns performing for audiences of one. Intimate and disconnected simultaneously. Free entry.

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The Messengers

Li Wan — born in 1991 in Wuhan, editor at Horizon Books Publishing Company in Beijing. Winner of the Weiming Poetry Prize in 2015. Her poetry and essays have appeared in Enclave, Shanghai Literature, and Artworld.

David Huntington — managing web editor at SpittoonCollective.com. His work has appeared in Literary Hub, Literary Shanghai, and Post Road. His screenplay New Violence was selected for the 2018 Middlebury Script Lab.

Joy Stuhr — professional musician and teacher from Wisconsin, USA, who has performed in Panama, New York, Ghana, and Germany. Based in Beijing since 2016. Pianist, cellist, singer, and songwriter whose style blends classical training with NYC jazz and sounds from around the world.

Deva Eveland — Spittoon’s online fiction editor and book club coordinator. Published in Alternating Current, Shanghai Literary Review, Puerto Del Sol, and New Dead Families.

Nina Dillenz — graduated with an MA in Theatre and Film Studies from the University of Vienna. Her visual work has been exhibited at Red Gate Gallery and Aotu Space, and she co-directed the music video City of Mirrors for post-rock band Macondo with Gregorio Soravito.

Ophélie Baudoin — French musician based in Beijing, shaped by the city’s underground music scene. Her work spans math rock to electro punk and experimental noise, drawing on everyday life for source material.

Matthew Byrne — Spittoon founder. Haunted by fragments of poems and songs that ferment occasionally in a boozy Beijing patchwork. At this event he came to the wall with those fragments, for listeners to hear from the other side.

Sara F. Costa — Portuguese poet and author of five published collections. Winner of the international Glória de Sant’Anna award for best poetry book published in Portuguese-speaking countries in 2018. Based in Beijing, coordinating events for Spittoon and hosting the Spittoon Poetry Workshop.

Originally published December 2019 on the Spittoon WeChat channel. Part of the Spittoon MEGACITY event series at Aotu Space, Beixinqiao Toutiao 67, Beijing.