‘Runswick’: Played by Runswick Bay, a remote, ‘tiny one-pub-cum-village-cum-beach’ 5 miles north of Whitby (Rough Guide 2011). Such a site is crying for art. And a new ruler.

→ ‘King Kai’: Played by Kai Syng Tan, an award-winning artist-curator-researcher-advisor-lecturer (Documenta, Sydney Biennale, ZKM, MOMA, San Francisco International Film Festival, Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, British Short Film Festival). Kai uproots from London to become Runner-In-Residency in Runswick Bay for 5 weeks. Fully-immersed and functioning as director, presenter, researcher and writer, Kai works with a production house that employs local crew, artists, actors and the community to produce a 10-minute TV episode each week (or a single 45-minute film to be shown in cinemas). This series is based on Kai’s 4-years of Rather Serious Doctorate Research conducted at the Slade School of Fine Art as a UCL scholar which re-imagines the popular sport of running as a creative mode of expression. For Artangel, Kai creates a TV series that explores running through its histories, stories, forerunners, movers and shakers, and spotlights its playfulness, potential for philosophical meditation and political subversion, boundless poetic possibilities, power to heal and to enable us to ‘run’ our world. It explores how when we run, we can see our city anew, dodge CCTV cameras, play hide-and-seek with the Big Bosses online, as well as take a cue from the ‘runner’s high’ and think in an exuberant manner free from logic, hierarchy and convention.

→ ‘Inhabitants’ and ‘New Immigrants’ of Runswick: Murakami, Phedippides and Zizek (who disses running as a ‘New Age myth’) aside, other inhabitants of Runswick Bay include a wide range of running-related people, real and imaginary, past and present. They include: secret-runner-Turner-Prize-Winner Keith Tyson; Angry Young Man ‘Colin’ of  ‘The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner’, the foot-lover-cum-Chinese-sage Lao Tzu; our 2-million-year-old runner-ancestors of the Homo erectus; fate-and-game-changer Lola of ‘Run Lola Run’, runner-politician Boris Johnson and code-breaker Alan Turing who invented the computer mid-run. Some of these characters play themselves, while others are played by local actors, or drawn by local school children. King Kai interviews and conducts discourses with these characters about running while running through the beautiful landscape of Runswick. It is just as well that the Latin etymology of the word ‘discourse’ refers to ‘running from place to place’. With local runners and artists, King Kai generates GPS drawings, animation, and music inspired by running. Along the way, she dispenses running tips, gets her head MRI-scanned before and after a workout, summons the Taoist gods to learn about the human body’s role as a centre of knowledge and a map of the cosmos, as well as hang out with techies to develop running apps, and offers herself as guinea pig to test-drive them.

→ ‘Audiences’: Runners, non-runners and the sceptics. Watching the drama, tears and action set in the exotic Kingdom in their living rooms, people may be inspired to rethink the creative possibilities of running, and to even leave their couch and run (to Runswick Bay?). The series runs the gamut of aesthetic approaches, including point-of-view shots taken with devices worn by runners. Resembling a reality-show cum arty cine-essay cum tongue-in-cheek ‘how-to’ series chock-ful of practical advice, philosophical ponderings, wordplay and riotous images and sounds, the series will appeal to artists, reality-show-bingers, runners, coach potatoes, art-lovers, consumers of health and documentaries, academics, sinologists, sport scientists, sports-haters alike. Apart from the TV series, there are by-products and spinoffs, including training app, games, and publication.

→ Additional Co-Runners and Collaborators

• Performers: Amelia Johnstone (illustrator) and Peter Hathaway (designer) who run and draw with their mobile art studio. 

• Composer, Sound Engineer: Award-winning Singaporean Philip Tan. 

• Cinematographer: Michael Larsson

• Advisor: Dr Alan Latham, expert on the history of running, Senior Lecturer UCL Geography.

• Advisor: Dr Matthew Skinner, expert on the paleoanthropological history of running, UCL Bioanthropology