At 9 minutes and 88 seconds, stage and screen are not opposing territories. Even if, as she freely admits, they almost feel like contradictions.
The Taiwanese singer-songwriter whose music includes jazz, soul, and Mandarin pop, has expanded her footprint as a film actress in recent years. Her film “Girl,” the directorial debut of actress Shu Qi, who took her bow in Venice last year, was screened as part of the Hong Kong Asian Film Awards program, and she attended a conversation event held on the sidelines of the awards ceremony. This is one of the relatively few industry forums she has attended. “I’m really approaching it as a newbie,” she says. “I haven’t had many opportunities to participate in events like this before.”
When she speaks, that sense of genuine openness comes through again and again. 9m88, who studied music in New York City before returning to Asia and has a background in fashion design, is thoughtful and precise about the distinctions between the two creative lives, even as he resists drawing rigid lines between them.
“Film is a collective creative work,” she explains. “As actors, we immerse ourselves in a character for a period of time and learn to understand and even love whatever that character is doing.” Songwriting requires almost the opposite, she says. “You’re always digging into your own struggles and experiences, asking yourself who you are and what you want to say. Sometimes that process can be very energy-consuming. There are moments when you feel like you’re stepping into the abyss without knowing where you’re going.” Her conclusions are frank and impressive. “Although acting and songwriting both fall under the category of performing arts, in many ways they feel almost contradictory.”
She is currently starring in several film projects, including “A Foggy Tale” and “Double Happiness” alongside “Girl.” In “Double Happiness,” she plays a wedding planner with relentless optimism, a trait she admits doesn’t come naturally to her. “I don’t think I’m naturally that bright, but I felt I could learn a lot from her perspective and way of thinking,” she says. “When you step into her world, it’s like wearing a different suit for a while.”
Preparing for roles set in clear historical and emotional records brings her back to archival research, she says. “I read books that included letters and archival material from the time,” she explains. “Some of these letters were written by prisoners to their wives. When I read them, their handwriting and the way they spoke conveyed a sense of desperation. Those emotional traces became important triggers for me.”
Her time abroad in New York left a lasting mark on her thinking about collaboration across disciplines. She recalls interdisciplinary classes in which theater students collaborated with jazz and classical musicians to create short dramatic pieces and improvised performances. “That experience taught me how different artistic languages can interact,” she says. “Creativity is often an experiment.” Her fashion design background strengthened that instinct. “In that world, the collaboration of different materials and elements was very natural. That idea still stays with me.”
Live performance, she says, shaped her approach to the camera. “The biggest lesson from performing on stage is learning to be fearless,” she says. “Viewers can easily tell when someone is feeling anxious or uncomfortable.” She also learned to embrace the unexpected, like when a microphone goes out or something unusual happens in the crowd. “In fact, I consider those accidents to be moments of creativity,” she says.
Returning to songwriting after a series of film projects posed its own challenges. “Film is a huge medium in terms of storytelling and storytelling,” she says. “Sometimes I wonder how I can translate such a big picture into a three-minute song. Maybe I don’t need to think that way, because music and film are different mediums and serve different purposes. But something in my perspective has definitely changed.”
She is careful not to see movement between disciplines as a pivot or a starting point. “I haven’t really thought about changing career paths or choosing between music and film,” she says. “For me, it’s about how to become a better performance artist.” Looking to the future, she says her “first love,” music, will always remain front and center. But she added that she was surprised by what the movie gave her. “The competition is fierce, but it has also helped me grow a lot as a person.”
Ideally, she says, the two would continue in parallel. “But life often unfolds in unexpected ways, and I’m just grateful for opportunities that come along at the right time.”
