Podcast series: Afterall x Para Site, Reframing Strangeness
Podcast series: Afterall x Para Site, Reframing Strangeness
In collaboration with Para Site, Hong Kong, as part of the exhibition ‘Reframing Strangeness: Ha Bik Chuen’s Motherboards and Collagraphs’ (2025), Afterall have initiated a series of conversations with artists, curators and scholars. The exhibition reframes Ha’s motherboards from functional tools to aesthetic objects. We depart from Ha’s unconventional printing practice to generate new interpretations and intergenerational conversations, extending from Hong Kong to the world beyond. Episodes airing between July and September 2025.
This podcast series is produced by Arianna Mercado and co-edited by Elisa Adami, Wing Chan, Adeena Mey and David Morris.
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Episode 3: release 29 September 2025
Afterall x Para Site, Reframing Strangeness with Mike Fok
Ha Bik Chuen was known as a collector and hoarder of all sorts of things such as books, photographs, documents, to name but these. Reflecting on the drive of collectors and hoarders and in an associative move that expands from Ha to other collecting practices in Hong Kong, Afterall Editor Adeena Mey speaks with Hong Kong-based collector and consultant Mike Fok about his lifelong passion for Yixing teapots and Chinese tea culture in our third and last episode of ‘Reframing Strangeness’. Mike shares how his journey began more than twenty years ago, when a taste of aged pu’er tea sparked his curiosity. The search for good tea soon led him to teaware, and eventually to the world of Yixing clay teapots – renowned for their craftsmanship and unique brewing qualities.
He recalls starting out in Hong Kong’s markets and on early online platforms, before realising that much of the best material had already been collected in the 1980s and ’90s. His quest took him further afield, to mainland China, Japan and Thailand, where he encountered antique teapots and learned from handling real examples. For Mike, using teapots daily – washing, touching and brewing – is the key to understanding their qualities, much like testing different sound systems with music, a learning process akin to how Ha taught himself to make motherboards through tactile experiences.
The discussion also touches on the rise of younger tea drinkers, the spread of tea culture through Instagram, and the growing global interest in both tea and teaware. Along the way, Mike offers advice for beginners, stories from his own collecting, and insights into how teapots connect history, craft and everyday life.
About the speakers
Adeena Mey is a research fellow and editor at Afterall Research Centre.
Mike Fok (@mikefokjazz, b. Hong Kong) first discovered Yixing teapots after a memorable tea gathering, where he was struck by how they enhanced the flavours and aromas of aged pu’er and yancha (‘rock tea’) – transforming them into a true feast of taste and fragrance. Like his other passions, theatre and jazz, his fascination with Yixing teapots became a lifelong pursuit of exploration, never satisfied with simple answers from books or online forums. Focusing on Yixing teapots from the renowned Factory One period (1958–98), Mike has pursued a systematic study of their five key aspects – clay, shape, craftsmanship, mark and kiln – through extensive fieldwork in Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Yixing itself, as well as Thailand and Japan. Mike regards these objects not only as vessels for tea, but as artworks that reflect the spiritual life and aesthetic sensibilities of their time.
Episode 2: release 17 August 2025
Afterall x Para Site, Reframing Strangeness with Grace Samboh and Ruhaeni Intan
Our second episode in the series is with Grace Samboh and Ruhaeni Intan from the Yogyakarta based collective Hyphen—. Founded in 2011, Hyphen— is a research initiative that puts forward curiosity and common wellbeing as the estuary of artistic practices. Their work is most often focussed on practices from and in Indonesia, bringing historical legacies into dialogue with contemporary concerns, work that has taken various forms, from exhibitions and publications to jam sessions and radio broadcasts.
For this episode, Grace and Intan are in conversation with Afterall research fellow and editor David Morris. We explore how their work as part of Hyphen— extends some of the questions of ‘Reframing Strangeness’ on different practices of history: How and why do we remember? How are creative legacies cared for, carried and brought into the present?
About the speakers
David Morris is a research fellow and editor at Afterall Research Centre.
Grace Samboh (b. Jakarta) lives and works either in Yogyakarta, Jakarta, or wherever her friends are at. Her work is rooted in research as it justifies her curiosity. She makes exhibitions, produces artworks, manages programmes, and would like to write more. She believes that curating is about understanding and making at the same time. Her research looks at contemporary practices outside the existing centers and slowly reconnects them all with the past and central narratives. With Hyphen— (f.2011), her concern is to encourage arts and artistic research projects and publications in and from Indonesia. With Enin Supriyanto, Yustina Neni and Ratna Mufida, she used to run Equator Symposium (Yogyakarta Biennale Foundation, 2010–18) where they explored the possibility of connecting equatorial countries through current life situation with an admiration to the past and optimism towards the future. Since 2019, she has been directing programmes in Jakarta’s RUBANAH Underground Hub.
Ruhaeni Intan (b.1995, Pati) made her debut as a novelist when her first novel, Arapaima, was published by Buku Mojok in 2019. Besides writing fiction, she also works as a freelance writer, be it as a copywriter, content writer, creative writer – anything that requires thoughts to be put into words. Her second novel, Seakan Bisa Dipisahkan was published by Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia (KPG, 2025). Currently, she is devoting her curiosity on archival work with Hyphen— while flipping back and forth between fiction and non-fiction that has owned her soul for so long.
Episode 1: release 21 July 2025
Afterall x Para Site, Reframing Strangeness with Michelle Wun Ting Wong
Focused on Hong Kong-based artist Ha Bik Chuen’s printmaking practice, ‘Reframing Strangeness’ stages a selection of his ‘motherboards’: a term Ha coined to designate the printing plates he labouriously assembled from wood and other found materials to produce over 3,000 editioned collagraphs.
In this first episode, Afterall editors Elisa Adami and Wing Chan talk to the exhibition’s curator Michelle Wun Ting Wong. We explore how the materials the motherboards are made of can help us read Hong Kong’s history from the 1970s and its changing landscape.
About the speakers and artists
Elisa Adami and Wing Chan are editors at Afterall since 2021.
Michelle Wun Ting Wong completed her PhD studies in Art History at The University of Hong Kong in 2025, exploring the modernity emerging from post WWII Hong Kong. From 2012–20 she was a researcher at Asia Art Archive (AAA), focusing on Hong Kong art history and histories of exchange and circulation through exhibitions and periodicals.
Ha Bik Chuen (1925–2009) was a Hong Kong-based artist who made prints, sculptures, collage books, and was also a prolific photographer.