One of the oldest and most active independent art institutions in Asia, Para Site is Hong Kong’s leading contemporary art center. Its curators aim to forge a critical understanding of local and international phenomena in art and society – an approach they are bringing to the film program at this year’s Art Basel Hong Kong. Titled ‘In space, it’s always night’, the four-day program takes Isadora Neves Marques’s feature-length film Vampires in Space (2022) as its starting point. Here, the executive director of Para Site, Billy Tang, and curator Celia Ho, who developed the film program with assistant curators Jessie Kwok and Yuanyu Li, speak about the sci-fi storyline and how it relates to the broader program.

Billy Tang: Since COVID, there has been a narrative surrounding Hong Kong about people leaving, and less about the story of people coming to the city. But I think that story is needed for thinking in a more nuanced way about the complex changes that are happening in the city. The artist Isadora Neves Marques became partially based in Hong Kong during the pandemic and very quickly connected to the art scene here. She represents the stories that I think need to be told, and we wanted to highlight that with this year’s film program.

She also influenced our approach to organizing the thematics of the program. We wanted to problematize the ideas of separation and categorization, and Isadora’s film Vampires in Space (2022) provided a canvas so rich with different readings.

Celia Ho: The film is a sci-fi story set in a speculative, maybe foreseeable, future. It’s about a family of non-binary vampires going on a centuries-long journey on a spaceship into an unknown future on a distant planet. In the film’s narration, each character has a very contemplative, self-reflective storyline. They unpack memories and histories but also reflect on their current state of being. There is a scene where everyone does a daily routine together – a kind of collective dance or set of bizarre movements – in order to stay healthy and stay sane in the spaceship. Through the almost diaristic narration, the personal journeys are highlighted, but in these collective moments, you remember they are in the same spaceship – everyone is on the same journey and facing the same unknown.

BT: The idea of this journey provided an interesting and rich metaphor for the program, which we titled ‘In space, it’s always night’. I think it’s also evocative of the medium of moving image in terms of the relation to shadows, light, and projections – a kind of void where your imagination starts to problematize your relationship to reality. I also like the idea that something so mythological, like space, can be so mundane. By making something grounded and mundane, you can then access it in a different way.

CH: So Vampires in Space will be featured as a special screening to kick off the program, and it will be followed by four thematic programs inspired by its narrative.

BT: Program one is called ‘Nature’s Mirror’, which looks at the shared dynamics between humanity and nature.

CH: This relates directly to why the vampires are in space: Why do they need to find a new planet to reside on? There must have been some existential crisis or destruction on earth that pushed them to find somewhere new to continue their journey.

BT: Program two is ‘Phantom Voyages’, which is based on the idea of a journey from the real to the mythological.

CH: This is seen with each vampire tracing their own history and how it might be connected to their current state of mind. It’s about the complexities of collective histories and how our psychological state can have connections that go beyond time and space.

BT: Program three is ‘Echoes of Resilience’, which traces personal and collective struggles, thinking about remembrance and marginalized communities and their survival in environments that are indifferent to them. Vampires in general are often villainized and othered; they appear on screen for a few seconds, something nasty happens, and then they’re gone. It’s rare to see their vulnerability in a prolonged way like Isadora shows in the film.

CH: This part of the program is also connected to the vampires as a non-conforming family structure.

BT: And the last program is ‘Cyborg Within’. It’s about this idea of hybridity, of the relationship between human and machine.

CH: It’s not just about how the human and machine can merge in the future, it’s a re-imagining of how we think these distinctions in a more fluid way. It resonates with the vampires existing in a speculative future and how multiple futures can be envisioned.

BT: There's an intriguing concept that connects vampires to contagion – the idea that vampires can infect others, similar to how various genres seep into and influence one another, and how tales from different eras continue to haunt our present. Perhaps this infection isn't as repulsive as it seems and instead offers an opportunity for us to even come to embrace and love.