Still We Thrive
Bo Wang, Jo-Lene Ong

The Beamclub film programme Still We Thrive presents different enactments of refuge and sanctuary through thinking communally, dancing collectively, dreaming with future ancestors, and staying slippery between categories. The programmed films use various film techniques and narrative structures, alongside human and beyond-human actors. Popcorn and soda will be served!

Guest curated by Jo-Lene Ong and Bo Wang for Refuge – fleeing, flowing, leaking

(The programme title is borrowed from the title of a film by Campbell X)

Jo-Lene Ong is a curator and teacher based in Amsterdam. She is of Malaysian Hokkien heritage and got her start in the field at the intersection of social activism and art in Kuala Lumpur. Her practice engages with the textures and transmissions surrounding migratory movements and boundary transgressions. Recent roles include being co-curator of Hartwig Art Production | Collection Fund (2020-21), co-curator of visual arts and theory at Other Futures (2020-21), co-editor of Practice Space (2019) a volume on art initiatives and forms of radical localisms, and being in the curatorial team of SUNSHOWER: Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia 1980s to Now at Mori Art Museum and National Art Center Tokyo. Jo-Lene has curated presentations in Framer Framed, Amsterdam; Oude Kerk, Amsterdam; De Appel, Amsterdam; Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam; ILHAM Gallery, and Kuala Lumpur; National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur. They teach at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie where they part of the academy’s Urgent Ecologies working group for a more sustainable art curriculum. Jo-Lene was awarded the De Appel Curatorial Research Fellowship 2018/19 after completing the De Appel Curatorial Programme in 2017-18. She has a background in business management and previously managed an arts and culture platform in Kuala Lumpur.

Bo Wang is an artist, filmmaker and researcher based in Amsterdam. His works have been exhibited internationally, including venues like Guggenheim Museum and Museum of Modern Art (New York), Garage Museum (Moscow), International Film Festival Rotterdam, LUX & Open City Documentary Festival (London), among many others. He is currently a PhD candidate at Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam.