Made in Hong Kong, during a 10-week residency at the Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University. Sound by Jan Jelinek (Moire - Strings). 

 

Featured on: 

 

The Guardian - https://goo.gl/WmbtpT

Dezeen - https://goo.gl/p5Sivf
Archdaily - https://goo.gl/GeBY7B
Guardian Cities - https://goo.gl/DL95W3

 

Exhibited/ screened at:

 

TU Graz Institute of Architecture and Media - Faculty of Architecture (2018, Austria) 

Roca London Gallery (2017, UK)

Venue Gallery (2017, Taipei, TW) 

Jiang Shan Yi Gai Suo (2017, Hsinchu, TW)

Taipei Artist Village (2017, TW)

310NXRD Gallery (2017, London, UK)

HK Baptist University - Academy of Visual Arts (2017, Hong Kong)

_______

 

 

“Wending Fanrong” is an attempt to introduce an alternative way of mapping the spatiality of politics and history of a city through a disembodied and remote-controlled gaze. The title derives from the principle that organises HK’s official identity under Chinese rule (stability & prosperity). In fact, there

is a missing subtext that one can borrow from Robert Venturi’s seminal book on postmodern architecture: complexity & contradiction*.

​​

The latter two terms reveal the complementary latent foundations upon which the official Chinese discourse constructs the image of HK as an exuberant and thriving community. Contemporary HK is more than that: its complex and contradictory nature stems from its turbulent historical past, its colonisation, decolonisation and re-nationalisation, the social injustice and inequality, the constant movement of goods and capital and, above all, the perpetual movement of its people.

​

This movement produces the political, cultural and social mix that generates a city in a permanent state of transition and a hybridised identity, with ephemeral foundations and fluid characteristics. This process is scribed on its body, manifested in its urban landscape, in the organisation of working, living and public spaces, all reflecting on how the city constantly reinvents itself. The condensed urban development and structural formations encapsulate the spirit of its past, present and future; they speak of its history, its monstrosities and miracles, uproot the official Chinese discourse and unveil a wealth of contradictions that constitute HK one of the most attractive and mesmerising dystopias on earth.

 

*Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, Robert Venturi, Moma, 1977