View.Point. is a multi-disciplinary performance event occurring on Wednesday, July 28th, 2021 at the Mt. Baker Ridge Viewpoint, a small, urban park overlooking many areas of Seattle, as well as the Puget Sound and Olympic Mountains.
View.Point. will feature four performing artists: Khiang Hei, Jim O’Halloran, Paul Nelson, and Justine Chan.
Final update and live stream link:
The live stream will be at twitter.com/gregbem. Note that the account will be locked until the time of the performance. The performances will begin around 4:45pm Pacific Time and will last for about one hour.
Meet The Performers
From Khiang Hei
Khiang H. Hei is a visual artist/photographer. Khiang has an interesting history, including surviving a civil war and extreme revolution under the Khmer Rouge regime of Pol Pot in Cambodia during the 1970’s. His family escaped to different countries before arriving in New York City in 1981. Khiang is a Chinese descendant (Chaozhou). Most of Khiang’s education was in the United States, starting from high school and progressing to university, including both undergraduate school at University of Buffalo, New York, and graduate school at UCLA. Due to the circumstances of war in Cambodia, Khiang missed school from 1975- 1981. Khiang had to learn a new language, and catch up on the years of education he was missing. He found art to be his own personal therapy for healing.
From 1992 onward, Khiang has returned to Cambodia once every few years doing various photographic projects related to how his personal history intersects with historical events, as well as contemporary cultural, economic, and political issues. Some of his topics include documenting people injured by land mines, prostitutes living in brothels, and Hill Tribe people in Northeast Cambodia.
Khiang’s major obsession for almost two decades has been walking and documenting the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos and Cambodia. He is one of the earliest people to become aware of what local people in these areas do with war remnants from the American- Vietnam War. He is interested in how people transform unexploded ordinances into objects such as pots and pans, boats, bridges, fences, water containers, animal feeders, cowbells, stilt houses, chairs, and knives. Others were bombs that were sold as scrap metals abroad, either to Japan or other countries, to make Honda and Toyota cars.
Since 2010, Khiang returned to Cambodia to live and work, as well as make art focusing on contemporary issues facing Cambodian society. He curated four performances, as well as a few art installation/photography exhibitions in Phnom Penh.
Khiang has also exhibited internationally. In 2015, Khiang moved to China, but he continued to return to Cambodia to do his on-going photography/ video documentary, as well as some visual arts projects. In August he will be moving to Amman, Jordan, with his family.
From Justine Chan
Justine Chan is a Chinese American singer-songwriter and writer from Chicago. She has been writing songs and singing for more than a decade now ever since she first encountered Taylor Swift’s self-titled debut album. Justine likes a sound that is sometimes ethereal, sometimes jazzy, and always, hopefully, with young old soul. You can find her music at youtube.com/brionoke and soundcloud.com/justine-chan-j-tine.
From Paul Nelson
Paul E Nelson is a poet & interviewer involved in a 20 year bioregional cultural investigation of Cascadia from the TUX woo’ kwib watershed in Duwamish Ancestral Territory. You can learn more about Paul at his website.
From Jim O’Halloran
Music means everything to me. I love it because it challenges me to find my center and connection with each note—and the silence between each note— and because it’s a shared experience that impacts each individual differently.
I’ve performed internationally with various ensembles, including leading the Afro-Cuban jazz bands Chela and Freezerburn. My experience over the years has given me not only an extensive list of tunes, but a deep reserve of excellent players to call for specific needs.
I’m currently playing with my own groups, including the Jim O’Halloran Trio, (or quartet/quintet/sextet), which specialize in jazz, Afro-Cuban, and African music.
When I’m not playing or writing music, I enjoy reading, bicycling, spending time with family, and cardiac electrophysiology (yes, really—I’m a recently retired RN). I also love going on walks near our home in Seattle with Lyle, the best dog in the world.
You can learn more about Jim at his website.