DAYTRIP is about chasing the dizzying, ecstatic, perhaps even nausea-inducing possibilities of movements. Defying fixed positions, moving without destination, it comes at you (as you come towards it) from the errant heart of queerness, the poetics of migration, the trespassing of borders, the desire for metamorphosis, and the imperative to move in order to survive.
It is the same spirit that courses through Apichatpong’s Weerasethakul’s high-velocity joyride with two young labourers showing off their physique, warm smiles, dear memories, tattoos and instincts for metamodern filmmaking.
It shows up again in the live performances of Joseph Lee and Paula Wong – in which bodies, gestures, perceptions, and performance style come into energetic dialogue with each other, to discover potent fissures, to go into and through them on a journey towards reconstruction.
Perhaps like the best of us, it also relishes in its own subversion – such as when certain movement is only possible under complete immobilisation. Like when the only movements you can surmount is training your eyes on hua hua’s ropes slithering and lashing on skin. As soon as you let go, something else inside you shifts with the momentum.
Follow that impetus down to the tip of your pink tongue, as it drags across raised Braille dots embossed on Osamu Shikichi’s torso, salt and friction meeting your nerve endings in a dance of sensory alchemy and intimacy.
Then pull back, and yet even further back, like the fluttering of pages searching for homes on foreign shores, with a desire for refuge and affinity. Don’t worry about getting lost as Pubis Project offers all wandering books a mark of their home in their latest workshop.
As the daytrip fades into twilight, an assembly of kindred spirits, new conspirators, unlikely allies awaits you at the altar of FLOW. Curated by the inimitable Princess Xixi, this rave promises to be a rare moment of convergence, where parallel scenes are brought into dialogue with one another.
These are just some of the pit stops in an itinerary filled with eclectic performances, experimental practice-based workshops and cinematic wonders from the East and Southeast Asian regions. They desire for your body to be the next in a chain of pulsating energies, through which they can conduct images, feelings and radical possibilities – transforming you and the next person you pass it on to, and so on and on.
DAYTRIP is in many ways intended as a response, or maybe even an antidote, to the spirit of the ‘metaverse’. While the actual product has now died off unceremoniously, the politics and philosophy espoused by its concept continues to dominate contemporary life. It creeps up in the affixing technological gaze of the surveillance state, the coercion of our broken political economy, and the alienation from each other that is sinisterly encouraged. It is increasingly dangerous to be seen as othered, be it due to the scourge of anti-queer prejudices, legalised transphobia or racist violence.
I hope that the artists, workshops, events and live acts in this inaugural edition of DAYTRIP would offer audiences a kind of escape, but not escapism. As their bodies and their light animate the space, so too will a different kind of reality be performed into life. It is a space committed to the unpredictability of artistic creation, where the art is both challenging and healing, and as critical as they are mesmerising.
As part of the upcoming and biggest edition yet of Queer East, the event will offer our audience not only a host range of exciting contemporary practices in the mediums of live and visual arts, but also opportunities to engage them with their own hands and crafts. We are running the full spectrum – shibari workshops, visceral bodily performances, a bumper shorts programme, formally subversive life drawing, Cosmo technical filmmaking, and a multidisciplinary club night with Princess Xixi. It is audacious, it is open to all with an open heart and open mind, and like I mentioned earlier, it longs for you to come at it (as it comes at you).
Full Access: £35 (2pm – 2am)
Day Pass: £25 (2pm – 9.30pm)
Rave Pass: £15 (9.30pm – 2am)
DAYTRIP is on 16 May 2026, at ICA, The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH, United Kingdom.
Curator Bart Seng Wen Long: https://www.antibart.com/
Princess Xi Xi: https://www.instagram.com/xixi_asinshe/
More about Queer East
Queer East showcases cinema and performing arts at various venues throughout London and will take place this May and June. Over the course of five weeks, Queer East will feature films, short films, documentaries, and moving image works that explore the ever-evolving queer landscape of East and Southeast Asia.
Queer East’s seventh festival edition also showcases an exciting performing arts program. The festival continues to build on its multidisciplinary momentum in partnership with leading arts venues across London, presenting a range of bold and thought-provoking queer works from East and Southeast Asia, as well as their diaspora communities.
This year’s program features two international productions: No. 60 by the renowned Pichet Klunchun Dance Company from Thailand, and Bunny by performance artists Daniel Kok and Luke George, who hail from Singapore, Germany, and Australia.
Additionally, there will be a new Queer East takeover at the ICA, DAYTRIP, featuring a dynamic lineup of queer artists, performers, and DJs from around the globe.
The program will also include an industry day for performance makers and cultural workers involved in queer and Asian arts.
The festival runs from 1 May to 6 June, with the performing arts programme hosted at Battersea Arts Centre, The Place, ICA and Chats Palace.
