Gabrielle Martin chats with Sammy Chien and Caroline MacCaull of Chimerik. They are presenting Inner Sublimity at the 2025 PuSh International Performing Arts Festival. Check out the show on February 7, 8 and 9 at the Vancouver Art Gallery. 

Show Notes

Gabrielle, Sammy and Caroline discuss: 

• What does it look like to transcend eastern and western philosophy in your work overall and in "Inner Sublimity" in particular?

• How does this project exist within a revitalization of Taiwanese culture?

• Why is it risky, and empowering, to talk about Taiwan?

• What is mediumship and what is its power in this performance?

• How does the space influence the design of the experience?

• What does it mean to use technology as an extension of the body?

• What was the creation journey for this piece?

About Sammy Chien

Sammy Chien 簡上翔 is a Taiwanese-Canadian immigrant and queer artist-of-colour, who's a multi-award-winning interdisciplinary artist, director, performer, researcher and mentor in film, sound art, new media, performance, movement and spiritual practice. With over 500 collaborative projects, his work has been shared across Canada, Western Europe, and Asia including Centre Pompidou (Paris), the National Centre for the Performing Arts (Beijing), National Art Centre (Ottawa), Stratford Festival, Art Night Venezia (Venice Biennale) and Documenta 15. He's  worked with pioneers of digital performance: Troika Ranch and Wong Kar Wai's Cinematographer Christopher Doyle and hundreds of internationally celebrated artists and companies. Sammy has been featured on magazines, TV and commercials such as Discorder, Keedan, CBC Arts and BenQ. Sammy is currently co-leading dance projects "We Were One" & "Inner Sublimity"; intergenerational media arts project "Ritual-Spective 迴融"; documentary film "Soul Speaking", funded by Canada Council for the Arts and BC Arts Council. Sammy is the official instructor of Isadora, Council of MotionDAO, Co-Artistic Director of Third Space Arts Collective and Co-Founder/Co-Artistic Director of Chimerik 似不像, a multi-award winning interdisciplinary non-profit arts organization who's worked with Google, Microsoft & NIKE, while prioritizing the focus on empowering various underrepresented communities with various sectoral change research and digital community projects such as Chimerik's Virtual Live Art Database. 

Sammy is the winner of the Changemaker Award for BCMA 2022 (BC Museums Association) for creative engagements that increase awareness of underrepresented voices & the 2023/2024 Chrystal Dance Prize. www.sammychien.com

About Caroline MacCaull

Caroline MacCaull (she/they) is a queer interdisciplinary artist living and working on the unceded and stolen territories of the Coast Salish peoples, including the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First nations. As a dance-technology artist her work often questions reality and our perceptions. She holds a BFA from Simon Fraser University School for the Contemporary Arts and has had her work presented by Shooting Gallery Performance Series, Co.ERASGA's Salon Series, Gallery Series 258, Vines Arts Festival, New Works, K.Format/documenta 15 (Kassel, Germany), Drink & Draw (Berlin), FOUND festival (Edmonton), Festival International de Danse Animée (Réunion) and the Scotiabank Dance Centre. She has been artist-in-residence at What Lab (Vancouver), LEÑA (Galiano Island), Dance Victoria (Victoria, BC), ArtStarts Ignites (Vancouver), DeerLake (Burnaby), Dance on Fluid (Taiwan) and NKK Dance Centre (Siem Reap, Cambodia). As a movement artist she has had the opportunity to collaborate and interpret movement with Peter Chin/Tribal Crackling Wind, Okams Racer, The Falling Company, Oksana Augustine and Restless Productions. Caroline is currently the Co-Artistic Director of the Chimerik 似不像 which has given her the opportunity to work as a New Media/Projection Artist on various projects with many different artists/organizations. Some of these include: Veronique West(Rumble Theatre), Mily Mumford (PTC), Jasmine Chen(Rice and Beans Theatre), Zahra Shahab, Restless Productions, Affair of Honor, Ralph Escamillan(Van Vogue Jam), Luke Reece(Theatre Passe Muraille), Arts Club, Active / Passive, Indian Summer Festival, Stratford Festival and Mayumi Lashbrook(Aeris Korper). Caroline is very grateful to be one of the 2023/2024 Chrystal Dance Prize recipients. 

Land Acknowledgement

This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Credits

PuSh Play is produced by Ben Charland and Tricia Knowles. Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi.

Show Transcript

 00:01

Hello and welcome to Push Play, a Push Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. I'm Gabrielle Martin, Push's Director of Programming, and today's episode highlights collective healing and overcoming our shadow selves.

 

 00:17

I'm speaking with Sami Chen and Caroline McCall, artists behind Inner Sublimity, which is being presented at the Push Festival February 7th to 9th, 2025. Inner Sublimity traverses currents of Eastern and Western philosophy through dance, creating a dynamic dialogue between traditions preserved across generations.

 

 00:36

Through this synthesis of paradigms, the artists spark new connections between disparate cultural backgrounds, carving an artistic practice that challenges colonial narratives and enriches contemporary explorations of spirituality.

 

 00:50

Sami and Caroline are the co-artistic directors of Chameric, a multi-award-winning interdisciplinary non-profit organization consisting of artists from underrepresented groups, from various age groups, backgrounds, levels of experience and disciplines.

 

 01:05

Chameric has collaborated on over 500 multidisciplinary projects, which have been exhibited internationally. Sami is a first-generation Taiwanese-Canadian immigrant and queer artist of colour, director, performer, researcher, and mentor who works with film, sound art, new media, performing arts, and spiritual practice.

 

 01:24

Caroline is a femme-identified queer artist with background in movement, dance, new media, and mediumship. Here is my conversation with Caroline and Sami. And I know just before we hit record, you commented that today is the U.S.

 

 01:41

election, so it's an interesting day to be doing this. There's all sorts of other pressures and nerves in the air. Yeah, it feels like you're saying it feels like a pressure cooker. You know, we are all in right now and not knowing what's going to happen next, but we are in here talking about, you know, you know, this exploration, this spirituality, and it just feels like the right time to be, to have those pressure and then something might come out that we don't even know as well.

 

 02:09

So it's kind of exciting. I appreciate that optimism in terms of the unknown, the unknown can still be a positive place. We are on the stolen ancestral and traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples, the settler on these lands, and I continue to try to educate myself on the ongoing legacy of colonization, the ongoing colonialism here, and I often lean on or reach to the Yellowhead Institute for their incredible words and just framing the state that we're living in now.

 

 02:55 </spa