Interview: Irene Hsiao

Our final Pulse Check interview is with Chicago independent dance artist and writer Irene Hsiao. I wanted to sit down with Irene because her work is mostly solo work. When I’ve watched her work on social media, it’s always so careful and also very vulnerable to witness. I’ve always thought that Irene’s work was healing for her and also for whoever is watching. I was curious to see what it was like to be a solo artist during a pandemic. If you are already used to creating alone, what does that like feel like when everyone else is also creating in isolation? Do you have to change anything, or does it force you to be open to collaborating with others?

— Alyssa Gregory

Alyssa Gregory: Talk to me about what you were doing right before the pandemic hit.

Irene Hsiao: So literally I was obsessively going to the Smart Museum and Wrightwood 659 as part of research for my Chicago Dancemakers Forum (CDF) lab year project or what became the beginning of my lab year project because I was going to make a site-specific performance that traveled through all of Wrightwood 659 — kind of like a movement tour of an exhibition they had called The Allure of Matter.

So, all the news about locking down, et cetera, I experienced at the museum. So, I was at the museum going “Hey, you guys, I don't have enough rehearsal time. I need more rehearsal times.” And that was the day that they were like, “all our public programming is cancelled.”

That was Thursday the 12th and being a very optimistic person, I mean, I internally knew that we would definitely not only close things off for two weeks because I know people in China.

I was thinking this would be a two-month thing, but also I was very much was like, let me figure out all kinds of ways that my project is not right now dead. So, I continued to go to the museum. People at Wrightwood were like “we’re so small. We can really limit attendance here. I think it'd be nice if we stayed open. And just had really limited attendance and really sanitized and wait.”

The last day was Saturday and I was the last one in the museum because I was just like, I'm going to try to figure out how this might be able to be done in a closed space with a limited audience or as a film. I was going through all the possibilities.

And then I walked through. I saw my favorite piece one more time. I actually laid down on the floor next to it.

Alyssa: That’s beautiful.

Irene: It’s one of those moments where you're like saying goodbye to someone or something and you feel pretty sure you're not going to see them again, but you don't know.

Alyssa: How have you kept yourself sustained?

Irene: I mean, bread making, obviously. But I feel overall, strangely I've done more collaborations with people during this time than I have in a normal period.

Alyssa: That's very interesting.

Irene: I mean, because very often the work that I was doing before that I had literally no budget so was me by myself doing stuff, sort of being in public spaces, but not working with others necessarily. And this year, I feel almost everything I've done actually has been a way of deliberately connecting.

Alyssa: That's amazing. I love that answer. I have another question about the process of making something during the pandemic. How did you make that happen? Everybody has a different journey about how to make art right now.

Irene: It is laborious. I think everyone making right now, all your time is spent on admin. So I think the first project I did was as an experimental zoom performance. And I think I spent 95% of the time scheduling.

Alyssa: I like to think that scheduling during a pandemic is hard because folks have decided to prioritize rest and care. I think in the before-times scheduling was hard because we were working at an unsustainable pace, now we are choosing ourselves. That sounds very woo-woo, but I can’t stop thinking about that.

I guess that kind of leads me to my next question. How has community felt for you during the pandemic during this past year?

Irene: Well, I think again, I don't think I'm going to say anything original by saying this, but I think it's been both extremely expansive and also limited. So I feel it's offered opportunities to connect with people I wouldn't necessarily have — maybe not the desire, but the time.

I think also I have the sensation of every time we do connect with someone I'm aware of the preciousness of that situation, or whatever together in this moment. It matters somehow. Yeah.

Alyssa: Yeah. The space and time and the care with people feels a lot different. I totally totally see that. What do you think is the most important lesson we as artists can learn during all of this?

Irene: Well, I dunno, is that different from what we, as humans can learn?

Alyssa: You choose.

Irene: I mean, one thing that I feel I’ve been interested in tracking through some of the work that I've done through this time is that whether or not we're aware of it, we are connected.

Alyssa: Okay. Final question. If things are opened up and back to normal, whatever that means and what’s the first art experience that you hope to participate in?

Irene: I truly cannot imagine this moment at this point. It's funny because I think part of dealing with this time has just been not ever thinking about the future and not ever having any expectation for the future.

Alyssa: I really understand what you're saying. My boo asked me randomly the other day, “where do you want to be in 10 years?” I was like, “hopefully I'm my own boss, I have love in my life,” but it honestly was so hard to answer. This pandemic has forced me to really think about the now and less about the future.

Irene Hsiao is a 2020 Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist and inaugural Artist in Residence at the Smart Museum of Art in 2020 and 2021. Her recent projects include a series of digital works inspired by the exhibition The Allure of Matter: Material Art from China and Vessel, a short film inspired by the exhibition Lust, Love, and Loss in Renaissance Europe. Her current work-in-progress is In Place: Medium, Image, Landscape, a community art project inspired by the exhibitions Toward Common Cause and Smart to the Core: Medium/Image.