Chooc Ly
(Vietnam)

Chooc Ly (aka Chooc Ly Tan) is a multi-disciplinary artist, DJ, music and cultural producer who works across moving-image, DJ sets, radio podcasts, event organising, and club nights, with a background in sculpture and performance. Her practice sets out to create new visions of reality by subverting or repurposing systems and tools we use to understand the world around us– such as concepts and methodologies from physics, politics and music. Often, Chooc Ly draws attention to power imbalances, using video and sound as mediums to find an experimental cadence within the personal histories, found footage, and political undertows that inform and inflect the Afro-Asian diaspora, in the face of ongoing colonialism(s). Her recent film commission On The Offbeat explores these disruptive and productive moments of suspension that surround syncopation, tracing the significance of the offbeat through Vogue Fem, diasporic rhythms, critical theory, and insect behaviour.

Her DJ sets forge astral connections through kaleidoscopic spectrums of club music and futuristic sound— fierce and emotional. She also runs the platform Décalé, a discursive experimental artist’s platform and club night, in collaboration with artist-curators Léïla Arenou and Kadeem Oak. Together, they aim to showcase visual artists, music producers and DJs who are disadvantaged by societal norms.

Past gigs include: Chinabot x Radio Flouka (Paris); After-Eight at Radar (Reykjavík); GGI 끼, Body Movements Festival, Howl Queer City IV, Queering Now (all in London); Swallow (Los Angeles), Regenerative Feedback (WORM, Rotterdam); Chalet Wote Festival (Accra, Ghana), and Poekhali! (Landmark, Bergen Kunsthall, Norway). Recent music releases include Exaltation Onirique on the Chinabot compilation ‘5’, ‘Coeur Bioluminescent’ for OUTPUTS Sampler1, and remixes on Metronomicon, Lost Map and La Boocle.

Chooc Ly has participated in talks as part of the Sonic Culture programme, CalArts – California Institute of the Arts; Decolonising Queer Artistic Space and Practice: Critical Dialogue with Asia-Art-Activism; DIY Science, Technology & Gender’, DIY Festival, London; and Signals: Experiments in Sound at the Tate Modern, London. She is a Lecturer in Fine Art, currently teaching on the MFA Fine Art programme at Goldsmiths University and the MA Photography programme at The Royal College of Art in London; she is also a Senior Ruskin Tutor on the BFA programme at The Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford.