Creating Chance Encounters: Festival Lounge

The AAGFF Festival Lounge aims to provide a comfortable, relaxed, and open area for visitors to rest and recharge while waiting for screenings. The public can interact with one another, share intellectual discussions, and experience M+ beyond its everyday operations. 

The lounge’s programme primarily consists of five parts: art installations, pop-up talks, workshops, vinyl DJ sets, and guided tours led by M+ curators. Eunice Tsang (Associate Curator, Moving Image, M+), who conceived the entire lounge programme, hopes to promote public participation in art events through this space. Visitors are encouraged to cultivate their curiosities and build unexpected connections. To facilitate these encounters, many art installations at the Festival Lounge have interactive elements, such as Cards of Chinese Animal Idioms: Legends in Human World by Mountain River Jump!. In this work, the artist duo combines digital technology and painting to reinterpret traditional forms of divination, breaking down the impression of art as inaccessible, serious, and obscure.

Tsang has expressed excitement to be part of this first effort to put together an event of this nature. For this occasion, she specially enlisted creatives active in different fields to participate in the event, breaking down various boundaries. Visitors can not only appreciate the thought-provoking screenings, but also explore and participate in artistic creations, experiencing the vibrant and passionate side of M+.