Anthony P O - S H A N LEUNG

This is an investigative report written at the time when Xiqu Centre (戲曲中心/ Chinese Opera) opens at the West Kowloon Cultural District in Hong Kong. It describes the linguistic landscape around the centre; cultural politics of Xiqu; and detailed interview with two Xiqu producers, namely Alisa Shum of the Chinese Artists Association of HK and Naomi Chung of the Xiqu centre. This investigative report attempts to lay out the tension between the local aesthetics and international reception of the traditional art form .

This investigative report takes the newly opened centre for contemporary art and heritage, namely "Tai Kwun" as its subject, to explain the politics on heritage in Hong Kong. It accounts for the forgotten history of social movement that preserves this former police station (Tai Kwun) and prison, and how the government has turned it into a site for culture that absorbs political demand into cultural governance. The report also challenges the official policy on heritage and revitalization in the post-colonial era, that is in fact a discourse of economic development. Despite of the well curated exhibitions on social history and its concerns to the adjacent neighborhood, Tai Kwun will not serve to stop gentrification if not to accelerate its pace.

The short essay problematizes the relationship between contemporary art and the museum by examining the first exhibition mounted at the M+ Pavilion, Hong Kong. By turning the open space into a death pit, the installation artist Tsang Kin-wah attempt to expose the true nature of the cultural district where the pavilion is built, that is, a "cultural desert" built to dislocate the vernacular culture of the city.

本文原草寫於2015年1月。當時雨傘運動被清場，約已一個月。運動內部方向及領導分裂；外部又遭政府暴力打壓。就連化整為零的「鳩嗚」 也無法再以佔領公共空間、堵塞資本運作來進行，而只能以言論自由作擋箭牌，繼續在「山」頭巷尾(後詳)及網絡社媒上進行無傷大雅的創意表達。親北京的建制派財雄勢大，名正言順地在官商渠道，在電視、電台、路訊通、交通廣告上「合法」宣傳；爭取真普選陣型，就只餘網絡、街頭、校園、家居以至郊野等合/非法、公共/私人的灰色地帶之間，以表達代替抗爭。「佔領民心」，變成正反雙方舖天蓋地的影象之戰。本文修訂之時，特區政府一如所料依據中華人民共和國全國代表大會8月31日提出框架制定方案，並將於月內提交立法會表決。會否出現另一波遍地開花的社會運動，仍是未知之數。但雨傘運動的特點之一，是創意表達的泛濫。作為階段性觀察，本文無意對運動走向或中港政治再添一筆，反而想從視界的角度，來剖析運動所顯現的缺乏與欲望。

This is a paper written for the solo exhibition of Leung Chi Wo at the Mills Gallery Hong Kong. The paper criticizes the old notion of identity politics that is based on subjectivity and its resulted representation. It takes Leung and Sara Wong collaborative project as an example to reconsider Emmanuel Lévinas's theories on strangers.

This is a proceeding of the art criticism forum "Writing Fotanian" which took place at the Fotanian artists cluster in Hong Kong. The essay examine the inter-media relationship in the art of the two captioned artists; and how they make critical comments on post-modern subjectivity.

[Remaining from the Translation: A Review of Leung Chi-Wo’s OCAT Shenzhen Solo Exhibition, “Press the Button”]
This short review analyze the un/translatability of the art of Hong Kong artist, Leung Chi-wo.  In his mid-career "retrospective", Leung fully explore the tension experienced in the daily life in a city that has a history of mulit-culturalism and bi/tri-lingualism. It also touches on the spatial strategy of how people make use of intimate spaces and its artistic potentials in the urbanscape. Last but not the least, the exhibition tried to go across the political borderline between HK and China through the poetics.

This feature include three short essays I wrote for the ArtCo magazine in Taiwan to review the several art fairs and events in Hong Kong during the Art Basel month March 2015. The first comments on the Art Basel effect, that the market force has marginalized cultural institutions in the public sector. Culture cannot takes roots in the fast shifting cityscape and the open economy. The second reviews exhibitions at the Duddell's and Para Site that using politics as the catch phrase but with failing in challenging politic.  The last one report about the dynamic of the two artist/ cultural districts, namely the Fotanian and the Island South Cultural district.

The author of this essay is the sub-editor of the book "Modern art in a colony : narrated by Hon Chi-fun at the millennium" ( Bernard Luk H.K. (ed.) Ontario, Canada : York University York Centre for Asian Research ; [Hong Kong] : Hong Kong Institute of Education, 2008) The essay takes the case of the modern HK Chinese painter Hon Chi-fan as an anchor point to look at the institutional context of the colony and explain in details how Modern Art was introduced to the HK art scene and its interaction with other "frontiers" in Asia during the Cold War. The essay was first published on the Mingpao Daily as a series of retrospective investigation at the 10th anniversary of HK handover to the PRC.

Ever since the 2006 movement to preserve the Star Ferry and Queen’s Piers, Hong Kong’s social movements have never gone without artists, artists who have ignited the avant-garde spirit, walked the frontlines and used all manner of creative methods to amplify the voices of the weak and turn the tide of public opinion. The phrase “art x social movement” has become a key term in the discussion of Hong Kong contemporary artists. This has particularly been the case in issues that touch on the specific operations of spatial politics, such as public space, urban renewal and development of the outskirts. In such cases, art has been used to skirt politics, following the maxim of “I hope we don’t get arrested for this” (This phrase in Chinese has served as the title of the exhibition “CHiE! – Culture sieges Politics”, a show curated by Japar Lau and Jessie Chang in 2008)”) as they occupy areas, repurpose spaces and overturn conventions. But since the student strikes and Occupy Central actions that began in the name of universal suffrage in late September, despite the waves of umbrellas and action, many artists who had once passionately engaged in politics chose this time to sit on the fence, or blend anonymously into the crowd. They were replaced by impromptu DIY efforts by citizens on the scene and in the digital world, from slogan banners to post-it notes, feet knocking over barriers, people appropriating news images and reimagining them in Cantonese. These are the flowers that sprouted across Occupy. For this essay, the author met with many newcomers and old veterans of “art x social movement” in an attempt to understand their sudden caution.

This essay researches the artworks  and artifacts produced during the Occupy Central Movement for universal suffrage, exploring the properties, roles and possibilities for contemporary art that have resulted, including the potential for art to change the world, and the role that art plays in social movements. One example is an “artwork” created out of umbrellas by students from the City University School of Creative Media. Drawing from the materials around them, they stacked metal barricades to form a pedestal, cobbled together a frame from the wires of broken umbrellas, and then affixed umbrellas of different colors together to create an Umbrella Tree. These “trees” have been placed in visible locations to serve as landmarks at the gathering areas. These students are using the installation form to create substantive expressions. They hold that the police should not oppose them, and that the situation today was caused by the powers that be, so the barricade symbolizes the police, while the umbrella represents the people, and the two should come together. However, artists including Justin Wong, the logo designer of the Occupy Central Movement, Pak Shuen Cheun, the conceptual artist, Yip Hoi Lun, the young calligrapher, Clara Cheung, the art space founder, all choose to participate as ordinary citizen. For them, creativity liberated by the movement should occupy the stage instead of the “artist”.

At this point, the essay raises several points for reflection. First, when the people have already “awakened” (a slogan of the Hong Kong Federation of Students), should artists take another step forward, or take a step back, leaving the stage to the people? Second, in this new era of the attention economy, the sense of joyful participation in resistance lowers the threshold for political participation, but how to revive the Carnivalesque energy of Mikhail Bakhtin, and expand it to touch on stagnant everyday life and even shake the political order? Finally, the author shows that after so many democratic movements, “art x social movement” has become deeply rooted in Hong Kong. The people proactively take to the streets and frontlines, with no fear of arrest. Now that the boundaries between aesthetics and politics have vanished, a new wave of art x social movement is waiting for renewal.

Lamma Island, one of the first places in Hong Kong where living traces of a former people have been discovered, has a history dating back to the Neolithic Age. Existing historical research prefers the past over the present. There is hardly any literature based on the lived experience of the islanders in the modern age. This book explore the postwar changes of the captioned coastal village, hovering across the local and the global.  This is a labour of love of the author, who have been residing on the island for more than two decades. It is also the departure of her academic journey into the new realm of Island Studies.

This is an interim result of my on-going archive project on the art writings of Oscar Ho Hing-kay.  The anthology has selection about twenty pieces of writings from the captioned period, each with an English summary and highlights of keywords.  This appendix serves to set the contexts of these selected writings and to prompt further research into Hong Kong art.

本書收錄何慶基從一九八〇年代至一九九八年的剪報文章。何慶基身兼藝評人、文化管理教授、策展人等多重身份，自一九八〇年代始便在不同報章撰寫藝評，以顯淺的文字，深入淺出地評述作品，去除藝術家在大眾想像之中神秘而不可接近的觀感，把藝術接軌大眾生活。正如丁穎茵在〈導論〉中提出，何慶基書寫藝評旨在拓展觀眾對藝術的認識。他拒絕不求甚解，從不全盤接受任何對作品單一的詮釋。不論是西方最流行的藝術理論、傳統的美學觀念，或是歐美藝術圈、國際畫廊所吹捧的「頂尖作品」，他也會以批判的眼光來審視。

所謂「不離地」，就是立足本土，其心思關懷盡在香港。當時的香港尚缺乏藝術策展意識，何慶基就其時的藝術政策提出意見，把策展的當代意義帶進其中。他的文章提出許多當時文化、藝術界的問題，至今仍然適用。《不離地藝評》是反思藝術與香港政治、社會及文化關係的重要讀物。

This short introduction is the curatorial statement of a research-led public art project on the out-lying island, Lamma in Hong Kong. Informed by the island studies perceptive, the project attempts to work against the historicising and objectifying of the countryside and the stereotype of islands. By juxtaposing some of the contrasting imaginations and realities on the island, it highlights the "paradox of island" that is unable to be summarized into any single narrative.  Built on the foundation of fieldwork, oral history interview and archive research done by the researchers, the project try to bring audiences to pay attention to the everyday practices of the islanders taking place on the interface between the land and the sea.  We emphasize on livelihood, living memories, local knowledges and cultural landscape of Lamma Island, thus to negotiated with the terrestrial world-view. 

Please follow the link to the project and the book.

香港政府在千禧之後銳意發展創意工業，藝術忽然從非主流文化變成為解決社會、經濟問題的良方。拍賣市場天價交易、藝術博覽大小通吃——每年三月的巴爾塞藝展（Art Basel）和其他名目的藝博展覽，已成為了「全球第三大藝術市場」的一抺繁華城市風景。
資深藝評人兼前線藝術勞工梁寶山，見證藝博與創意論述如何在香港落地生根，遊走在台前幕後，以第一身經歷細說藝術圈的芳芷腥臊。無論你是駕輕就熟的老行家，抑或初出茅廬的藝文青，都應該能從書中了解這種講金又講心。
This popular read is a revision of my Ph.D thesis on art labour after the giant art fair franchise landed in Hong Kong in 2008. The introduction is a critical analysis on the discourse on creativity and how the post-colonial government has absorbed it into her policy. The main body of the book is a series of ethnography and art world gossip that account for the changes to the art scene brought by the influx of global capital and elites, thus to theorize cultural economy of the contemporary art world and how it produce a new form of labour.