If you’ve ever wondered what a dream might look like when filtered through static, toy cars, and late-night radio frequencies, Heaven FM, performed by Hong Kong Exile, during the FTA has your answer. Presented in a black-box theatre cloaked in mystery and lit only by headlamps and projections, this performance offers a haunting and off-kilter meditation on communication, the cosmos, and the absurdity of trying to make sense of either.
The artists, dressed entirely in black, move like shadows across the stage, guiding remote-controlled toy cars with eerie precision. Strapped with headlights, the artists search for signals trying desperately to reach the other side. Their movements are choreographed but unpredictable, sometimes playful, sometimes menacing, like lost souls navigating a strange terrain.
Text projections flash across the walls—fragments of sentences, broken messages, and poetic non-sequiturs that feel pulled from half-remembered dreams or intercepted transmissions.
A key element of Heaven FM is its use of sound: radio static, distorted voices, and a low hum of interference that fills the space like fog. Performers tune into various frequencies using handheld radios, channel-surfing through snippets of speech, music, and digital noise. These sonic fragments don’t always add up, but they don’t need to—the performance seems more interested in the act of searching than in what’s actually found.
Headlamps serve both practical and symbolic purposes: they light the action in stark, sudden beams, often illuminating only what’s immediately necessary, while also evoking the feeling of searching in the dark—for truth, connection, or something ineffable.
There is no linear narrative to speak of in Heaven FM, but there is a story—one that’s felt more than told. It’s about broken signals, near-misses, and the strange beauty of trying to connect when the world feels utterly unknowable.
