James Kinoshita: Building the Unanticipated with Hong Kong Sign Language

RICHARD SCHLAGMAN: Once you walk into Kiyotomo, you know instantly that it could only be by Kuramata. It's really him working at the height of his powers. It's his language through and through.

IKKO YOKOYAMA: Kuramata's furniture works are more known internationally with his Memphis [Group] work and other products. He designed over 350 interior works, but [just] a handful of them is left.

ARIC CHEN: Kuramata was a designer that really brought notions of form and formlessness, lightness, transparency, objects that had an absence and a presence, objects as keepers of memories and tellers of stories. He was one of the designers that brought these ideas into design globally, starting in the ‘60s through the ‘80s.

DORYUN CHONG: It was very clear from the beginning that Kiyotomo sushi bar is a one-of-a-kind, remaining architectural example that would really be that very important piece in the foundation of the M+ Collections.

IKKO YOKOYAMA: Kiyotomo is [Kuramata’s] late work, designed in 1988. It is quite different than other spaces, which are more dreamy; the Kiyotomo is more subdued. He's using stone and wood and more natural material in order to create a more theatrical dining experience.

IGARASHI HISAE: [Japanese] Kiyotomo only opened in the evenings; there was no lunch service. The streets around Kiyotomo were dimly lit. Its entrance was a narrow, dark channel, until you slid the door open. Kuramata was trying to contrast the darkness with the light.

MIHOYA TOMOHIKO: [Japanese] Kuramata always showed a Japanese identity. Also, he loved magic. He would create illusions that people called ‘Kuramata's magic’. For instance, with its size, the restroom door could almost hit people between the eyes. He was mischievous and always surprised people.

RICHARD SCHLAGMAN: The original owner had got himself into financial difficulties after the Japanese [economic] bubble burst, and the landlord repossessed the property. I kind of had an impulsive reaction to say that I wanted to take over these premises even though I had no idea at that point at all what I could possibly do with it. And I eventually came across M+.

IKKO YOKOYAMA: Ishimaru was a contractor who built the sushi bar in 1988. Ishimaru has built and realised many of Kuramata's interior spaces.

KATSUMATA SHINICHI: [Japanese] When I first saw the plans . . . I thought, this was something unusual, even for Kuramata. It’s difficult to put into words, but it felt like suddenly stepping into a kind of wa, or Japanese sense of harmony. There is an impression of soft floating—that's what characterises Kuramata's design for this bar. Then, [Ingo Maurer’s] YaYaHo lights swam across the space. I think this is a delicate balance.

ISOZAKI ARATA: Carpenters never had the experience for this kind of joint. Every time, he had to design by himself every detail. Very carefully, he did work to eliminate traditional types of joint systems, or combined systems.

SHIMAZAKI HIROYUKI: [Japanese] It's definitely like he's setting up a challenge for us. All the craftsmen here experience that pleasure when we can respond to those challenges, like: ‘I did it! This time at least .’

YAMASHITA KIZAE: [Japanese] One of the most difficult tasks is dismantling the counter. The counter was constructed by gluing and pressing the stone onto a long, metal sheet lining that runs along the length of the counter. We will have to remove the glue from the stone slowly and with great care. Otherwise, the stone will crack.

IKKO YOKOYAMA: Two and a half years ago, we identified this as the moment, because we are ready to open a museum, ready to install the Kiyotomo sushi bar.

KATSUMATA SHINICHI: [Japanese] The first time, we had the stone skirting boards, then we built the framework and attached the wood panelling. But this time, we built the foundation first, attached the panels, and then the stone came. The process was completely backwards. I think that was the most difficult part.

IKKO YOKOYAMA: There is another key person who made this project possible: Sara Moy. She was M+’s first conservator.

SARA A. MOY: Well, I began the project in 2014 when the sushi bar was acquired. I had worked intermittently on it until we were leading up to its installation. Conservation work is detective work. You're always investigating how something is made. And that's how you learn about that particular material or that—or what's happening. There's some sort of history behind it.

IKKO YOKOYAMA: For example, in the entrance, there's a blue coloured wall; we found these three layers of different blue [paint]. I think Kuramata, he didn't like the first blue. He has changed the design while he's installing, and this type of discovery very rarely happens.

KATSUMATA SHINICHI: [Japanese] When I installed the wall panels from the beginning to the end, I was able to keep exactly a two millimetre gap around them. I think this has to be some kind of miracle. Yes. It's like Kuramata himself came down from heaven [to support us].

SHIMAZAKI HIROYUKI: [Japanese] Until yesterday, we had those blue tarpaulin sheets laid out. But after removing them and seeing that a piece of art was standing on top of the museum floor, I was quite surprised to find there was something quite emotional about it. Well, it feels like it's completed.

SUHANYA RAFFEL: I think of the museum as a place of nourishing the soul, the mind, learning. If people take away the idea that everyday experience is also very special, we're offering avenues for people to consider their relationships with objects—everyday objects, everyday experiences—but also design and architecture experiences.

Kenneth Ting: [Cantonese] This is the 'Tic-toc Clock'. There is a pendulum at the back. In putting the clock together, it teaches children to act constructively instead of destructively. It can run for about eight hours when wound up.

Cliff Sun: [Cantonese] This cocktail shaker was designed by Kin Hip. Its body is made of two plastic layers with liquor labels placed in between. This double-layer design provides it with a thermal insulating feature. Older alcohol aficionados are no strangers to these liquor brands.

The plastics industry emerged around the early 1950s. In the early stages, Hong Kong’s industrial and technological capabilities were advanced with assistance from Europe.

Kenneth Ting: [Cantonese] We expanded into Hong Kong in 1948. In the beginning, we made plastic chopsticks as a replacement for ivory chopsticks. However, faults would appear on the moulds after long-term use and require fixing, so we’d send the moulds back to the US for repairs. As repairs took more than a year, we decided to make the plastic moulds ourselves, and that was the dawn of the Hong Kong plastics industry.

Cliff Sun: [Cantonese] My father, the founder, purchased a plastic machine in 1953 to run a small-scale production facility. He didn’t bring much capital with him when he relocated from Shanghai to Hong Kong. I think we were the earliest company to combine two different materials into one product.

Jennifer Wong: [Cantonese] I think what is interesting about the design of Hong Kong plastic products is that many colours are available for one design and they mimic other materials, such as wood, ivory, metal, coral, and jade.

Jessica Leung: [Cantonese] For the ‘Plastic Crystal’ series, my father wondered at the time why we just printed graphics onto the surface. Why didn't we try to utilise different angles or mathematical principles to produce a variety of visual effects from ordinary lines? These designs were created manually one by one.

Bernie Ting: [Cantonese] In the 1970s, Hong Kong started to develop large ready-to-assemble furniture made of plastic and aluminium tubes. This required enormous injection moulding machines. At that time, no one in Hong Kong owned a 1,600-tonne injection moulding machine. It had to be imported from Germany.

Our movie viewer was designed around 1977. The film can be played on a loop for thirty seconds to two minutes.

Cliff Sun: [Cantonese] The earliest customers must have been British. We also produced combs and sold them to Africa. That customer is still with us.

Jessica Leung: [Cantonese] In my grandfather's time, he would not only participate in Hong Kong Brands and Products Expos, but also travel with the Hong Kong Plastics Manufacturers Association to Europe, the US, and the Middle East for exchanges and to promote the 'Made in Hong Kong' brand and the Hong Kong plastics industry.

Lee Chi-wing: [Cantonese] To me, plastic products can be produced at a low cost. They can improve the standard of living and make things more widely available. I hope the products I design can be available for use by many people, so I choose materials that are more economical and don’t require complicated production processes.

This product was made for an exhibition by Hulu Culture about the development of Hong Kong homes. When I was designing this, I wanted to transform the hanging lamps typically found in markets into something different. It can be turned into a desk or floor lamp to be used at home.

Vincent Au-Yeung: [Cantonese] Plastics used to be very durable. It’s just that people today have turned them into something environmentally unfriendly. Plastics can actually be used for a long time, but people use them for a short time and dispose of them too soon. Because I studied design, I found that Hong Kong’s design history has many wonderful aspects. Now when I introduce a product, I do so from a design perspective and tell people to ignore the era of its production. These designs can still have a special, practical value in today's society.

(Original language: Cantonese)

PAK SHEUNG CHUEN: Wandering around the city is like writing poems. When I walk past certain places, I might see a scene and capture it. It’s like finding beautiful words in a poem that can describe the scene. But my work is not poetry. My work is created through intervention, so my actions are like lines in a poem.

Every day I choose a grid on the map and wander around. When I arrived here at Tonkin Street, it was almost night time. When I looked up, I found this building to be an object of its own, standing out. I found myself having a connection to it. The whole thing seems like just one single object when you look at it, but every light represents a household. It was like I was interacting with one family at a time, using lights as signals. When they felt sleepy and wanted to turn in, they flipped the switch and the light went off and they went to sleep. The lights connected me with the daily routines of a group of people.

While I was waiting, a romantic idea came to me, which was to stay up with this group of people until they slowly went to bed. I kept waiting with a kind of anticipation. I’d only leave after everyone had gone to sleep. The interesting thing was that there was one last household; one person who did not turn off the light in their flat. So, in the end, this notion of ‘one’ appeared, and it reflected me, waiting alone on the street. It was a one-on-one situation.

One day, I was in the Kowloon Tong MTR Station. An idea popped into my mind. If I kept waiting here, how long would it take for me to bump into a friend? I started standing here to give it a try. Finally, after around four hours, I bumped into a friend I had spent three years with during university but hadn’t seen for the last two years, after we graduated. We were pretty close back then. His name is Jacky. We took a picture together.

You can imagine the situation when I was waiting. I really had nothing to do during that whole day. I had to set some conditions for myself so that I would find the time I spent meaningful, but I’m still not sure how much of that time actually was meaningful. It felt like I had fulfilled a mission, and the mission offered me meaning. I’d describe it as such: through constant creation, my works are like markings along the timeline of my life. But when a work is finished, it becomes something else. Ten years on, this work has become an important foundation upon which my friend and I developed our friendship. I have built on this foundation to press ahead with my creations.

SAMSON YOUNG: Sound and music was my original training. So although these days I'm making videos and drawings and objects, music is still one of the lenses through which I process the world.

As a student, I played the double bass. As a double bassist, you don't really play a lot. You spend a lot of time mentally prepping yourself for the passage to come and the way you would do it is to sort of silently finger through the passage. And I remember thinking what it might sound like if the entire orchestra started doing that as a way to practice a piece.

The Muted Situation [series], the whole series started with a pretty simple prompt. I was asked to make a series of works for a library. There's some interesting energy in that paradox: in that a library, you think of it as a quiet place, but it's not a place without sound. Certainly if somebody like a librarian sort of walking around with a cart and pushing books around, those sounds are heard and not judged against.

I started sort of thinking about the different situations where you could actually very selectively choose to mute one layer of sound I basically sat down and wrote twenty of these situations.

When I needed to make another one for the Sydney Biennale, I knew that I wanted to make that one the last one. So I thought about this idea again and I know the orchestra is just going to work, like, sonically. You need something that is almost too ridiculously romantic with big sweeping orchestral gestures, like one layer of sound colliding over another the entire string section speaking against the wind section.

Tchaikovsky's 5th is used in movies a lot. It's used in advertising a lot. So even if people don't know the entire symphony, there would be themes and motifs that people will recognise from here and there. So then you will get this effect of almost ghosting of the melody in your head. If you have a remote control, and you can mute specifically one layer of sound and then have the other layers of sound remain. That's what Muted Situation is.

Underneath that pitch layer, there’s rhythm, there’s bodily movement. You know there are all these things that exist, but they're just not being heard. There's an aggressive energy behind that idea of muting something.

JAMES KINOSHITA: Looking at the skyline now, I find that the strength of Hong Kong or the image of Hong Kong is the harbour and the Peak behind them. And the buildings in the foreground become just a mass of images. I think Hong Kong is a city of a clash of various images. I guess that gives us the liveliness of Hong Kong. Probably the architecture reflects this. It's a mixture of all sorts of things.

At that time, it had a very colonial feel about it. There are a lot of buildings of colonial period, like the Prince's Building. And then you've got the old Post Office. So there were a lot of that type of building. Hong Kong is a very dense city, so you've got to go up high to build on the land. With the Connaught Centre or Jardine House, as they now call it, basically it's a tower form. You put a tower going all the way down to the ground and leave the ground free as a plaza. So we'll build a bridge across Connaught Road so that people can come over. That is how the walkway system in Central started. It started from Connaught Centre crossing Connaught Road.

In order to get light into the office space, we had to produce windows. I took some of these ideas home. My wife [Lana], when she looked at it, she said, ‘Oh, it looks so boring. Why don't you try something different, like circles?’ A popular artist called [Victor] Vasarely, he uses squares and circles. I like that painting, so I thought, well, I would use the same principle. So that's why we went ahead and put circular windows into the office space.

It's very difficult to practice in Hong Kong, where everything is fairly commercial. It's high rise. I wondered whether I should stay in Hong Kong or not, and at that time, I asked Lana what she thinks about it. She said, ‘Why? Why do you want to go away?’ I said, ‘Well, Hong Kong is lacking in culture. It's very difficult to do good design.’ And she said, ‘Well, why don't you challenge it? Why don't you do something about it?’ With that fact and with that challenge, I accepted the partnership [at Palmer and Turner] and then tried to do my best to come up with the best solution for them. I don't regret it. I think, well, I'll try to do my best, try to do the best I can, as far as architecture is concerned.

(Original language: Cantonese)

WONG PING: I’m not that interested in animation, actually. I seldom watch animation movies. It’s just that animation is a means for me to express everything inside my head.

My work is a reflection of the state of Hong Kong as I create it. An Emo Nose is an example. The paradox of Hong Kong is its intensity, I think. I’m ambivalent about it. This intensive style of life is convenient and kind of warm. But it also impedes daily life. Even though I’m alone while I create, the city is very dense. So when I go out into the crowded streets, I still feel very warm.

Most of my work, actually—maybe 60 percent is about how I’m feeling at the time, or about Hong Kong’s political environment or the living-space situation. So my work is very connected with Hong Kong.

When I was producing Under the Lion Crotch, many of my friends told me to emigrate. Back then, when they encouraged me to leave, I didn’t know how to react. I didn’t leave. At the time I thought I was weak and cowardly. When I recently made The Other Side, after seeing all the change over the years, I realised it’s the same all over the world. It’s equally bad, actually.

Pessimistically, I think: maybe you can’t escape wherever you go, or the world is how it is. So when I look back I wonder, ‘Isn’t my own burden what matters most’? I think this brings me back to the first day I felt like expressing myself through writing or painting. It was with that sense of unease that I wrote my first article, and I’ve been [expressing myself like this] ever since.

There are mainstream singer-songwriters who say, ‘I have to stay in a state of lovelornness to create.’ I think Hong Kong keeps me in this constant state of lovelornness.

(Original language: Cantonese)

SHIRLEY TSE: I imagine that some individuals may feel as though they have no connection to the things around them. Through this exhibition, I want the audience to be able to see that, a lot of the time, every individual has a relationship to the whole picture and that, in this sense, everyone is a stakeholder.

The juxtaposition of very different things is the main concept [of Negotiated Differences]. In the course of this juxtaposition, those things need to go through a process of negotiation to accommodate other components with different angles and weights; to achieve stability and to counter gravity.

The negotiation is not just between different components, but also between spaces and how bodies move through spaces. When you walk in, for example, you see an arch that I’ve blocked. The audience needs to negotiate their own way through this space, and when they realise they can’t go forward, they will find another way in to continue exploring the piece.

The Hong Kong in Venice exhibition has an indoor area and an outdoor area. The installation in the indoor area sprawls horizontally throughout the space, while the outdoor installation explores verticality.

In this installation, Playcourt, you can see a variety of interactions and negotiations between different elements. Playing badminton over these delicate sculptures would actually be surreal, even absurd imagery. When I was little, I loved playing badminton in empty public spaces with my older brother and sisters. For me, playing badminton on the streets of Hong Kong is an act of reclaiming the public domain. As a resident in the city, you can make use of public spaces for all kinds of activities. In this set of objects—half equipment, half figurative sculptures—the use of an amateur radio also becomes an example of reclaiming the public domain by echoing daily conversations in the exhibition area.

For many parts of the installations, I didn’t predetermine fixed configurations. More often than not, it was during installation, through the process of negotiation, that I could finally fix their forms. The pieces will always end up coming together differently at different venues.

I hope that when the audience walks into the site, they will realise, oh! There seems to be a game here. But how do you play it? What are its rules? I want to leave room for the audiences’ imaginations.

ANSON MAK: [Cantonese] With documentary-based videos, you have to start with reality and make it a story about people. Even without people, if I’m filming a park in Kwun Tong, there’s really a park there. If I’m filming a tree in the park, there’s really a tree there. These are things that exist in reality. Space is about people and their activities. When filming moving images, a lot of the time it’s about using space to tell a story.

I like Super 8 film. Film has a unique texture. It feels more organic and not very life-like. The images you see [on film] aren’t the same as what you’d see in real life. They may appear so different that you ask yourself: is this really the same place?

There’s an extra layer where you compare the image on the Super 8 film with the one in your head. Of course, it’s not necessarily a simple comparison, as it most certainly involves emotions, memories, and your own experience. This is the texture that I like.

In 1998, I suffered a serious illness. I was so sick, I could not continue working. At that time, I had the space to do some soul-searching and introspection. That’s how I ended up creating more feeling-centred pieces like Tra(i)nsient. My partner then from Shanghai. We would often take the train to Shanghai. It was really about those moments. What was I thinking when I travelled? How did I feel?

It’s extremely important to think more about oneself. I became interested in essay films and autoethnography. That’s when I decided to make content relying on text and images. Then I started working on One-Way Street On A Turntable.

WOMAN’S VOICE: Just as all things, in a perpetual process of mingling and contamination, are losing their intrinsic character while ambiguity displaces authenticity, so is the city.

ANSON MAK: [Cantonese] It was a personal diary about the relationship between myself and history. I had been living in the US then and hadn’t been back to Kwun Tong for a long time. So, when I came back to film, there was a heavy sense of nostalgia. I wanted to get to know Hong Kong better and the beautiful things that, to some extent, belonged to days past. Perhaps, I also felt uncertain about my future.

How would it work to use more fragmented, poetic language in moving images? I used a lot of comparative formats—and even split-screen—to compare past and present, monochrome and colour, reality and fantasy.

After One-Way Street On A Turntable, I wanted to turn to subjects I’m less familiar with subjects that I—or maybe even others—would like to know more about and that are important to Hong Kong.

When I created A Floating City, I had a theme in mind, which was about space. Because of these three locations, I had to research policies on industrial buildings in Kwun Tong. When did the transition start? When did the factories start to move out? When did musicians first move in? I had to research those things.

MAN’S VOICE: [Cantonese] But why did that friend rent a place here in the first place? It’s impossible to trace… But indeed, it’s really the people that keep us here. The rent in districts like Tsuen Wan could be more affordable. But people from the music circle are settling here in Kwun Tong and Ngau Tau Kok.

ANSON MAK: [Cantonese] My earlier works tended to show more about what I thought. But starting with A Floating City, I became interested in what others think so that I can tell their stories. Back then, I was interested in stories about a place, and I wanted to film something related to music, so I worked with these three musicians. I asked them to pick a location to sing a song. Only after they decided on the locations and the songs did I begin my research on those areas.

MUSICIAN: Sometimes, I just can’t remember / All the things we did together / The wind, the dust, the mornings will remain / But they’re never gonna be the same again

ANSON MAK: [Cantonese] With documentary-based videos, you have to have a starting point. Why do I want to go to this place? It’s only through these processes that you accumulate material. Then you decide how to process them.

With A Floating City and other videos, there's both informative content and true stories. And these stories are shared experiences for Hong Kongers, who might resonate with some of the emotions within.

ANGELA SU: [Cantonese] Art and science are two different things, but they’re really the same. I'm trying to combine the two and tread between them.

Both require imagination and are based on data and reality. Both propose an alternative perspective to make sense of the reality that we see and our universe and challenge the status quo that we've accepted.

I'm obsessed with the body's internal structure. I find the insides mysterious, and I want to see them—see more, delve deeper, uncover more.

If you dismembered, deconstructed, and reconstructed a mix of elements together and turned them into a living thing . . . If you were 70% machine, 20% insect, and 1% human, would you be a human? Maybe you would have free will . . . It's a sci-fi or philosophical question as to how you define humans.

Do you know why I have a special liking for symmetry?

(On each side, like it’s a double image)

Children might have tried this: open a book, drip two drops of ink, close and open the book again to see a pattern emerge. Based on what you see in the pattern, others try to enter your mental space. Can you see B again after seeing A? The instant, the moment that the two co-exist is magical. I hope this is the feeling people get from seeing my drawings. I call it a Rorschach test, but I'm not using ink to create my works. Whether you see a sex organ, a butterfly, or something else depends on your perspective.

Many things are so divided in today's society.

Especially since the dawn of social media, the world that someone sees might be utterly different from what another person sees. The two can't communicate. After learning about someone else's world, would I be able to return to my own world?

There's authority in science, but actually that isn’t always the case. A lot of scientific drawings are deceptive. Or there's artistic interpretation involved. My documentaries construct something as a fact, but behind that, I add 1%, 2%, or 10% fictional elements. So, when people watch them, they tend to believe them. Then they'll come up to me and ask if that thing really exists.

The form serves to express my concept. I can use drawings to express bodies and machines, but I can also use videos, animation, or a novel. When you use different entry points, you'll be able to find out who Angela Su is and what I want to express. My drawings are about transformation; I might as well transform myself too.

The body, the female body, transformation, storytelling, world-making, mental illnesses, all sorts of things . . . science, scientific drawings, the true and the fake, dream and reality—everything has to come together to express the inner thoughts that I can't otherwise express.

I once laid out a few stories in a documentary. There's a main character. Some things happen. But suddenly, you enter the world of Angela Su. So, is Angela Su a character in the story? What's the position of Angela Su? [The preceding plot] stops feeling real. I love this intertwining and tension.

CHENG MAN-WING: [Cantonese] A bit thinner. All women everywhere say they want that. For example, when your body is upside down, the tassels on the costume will accentuate the motion, giving your movements a sort of . . . unearthly creature feeling, returning you to your true nature.

ANGELA SU: [Cantonese] My theme is levitation. There's a lot of social significance in this term, or perhaps something broader. Why is it that since time immemorial, humans have had a desire to fly? It might be a pursuit of freedom, a pursuit of transcendence, or a pursuit of something you can't achieve. I know I can't do it, but I persist.

It can also be about resistance, a resistance against gravity. Why do most superheroes fly? It’s a resistance against social mechanisms, artistic mechanisms, or the artistic institution, which is born out of dissatisfaction.

What is free will? Is everything you do predetermined by your DNA and a bunch of chemicals? Do you have a choice? To what extent does this choice stem from something truly spiritual in you, and to what extent is it purely a chemical reaction? I have to make changes because only by continuously making changes can variables occur. No one knows if those changes are good or bad. But if you don't make changes, you'll stay the same all your life, and the world will always be the same. You only have to dare to try.

I love mythmaking, and I love world-making—making my own world. I have my own story to tell.

(Original language: Cantonese)

LEUNG MEE-PING: I think it was eight years ago.

When I was planning to move house I was worried that I couldn’t find another place to store this much stuff . So, I looked for a warehouse. I never thought I’d use the warehouse as a studio. I don’t necessarily need a studio for the work I do. I’m an artist who works with materials. I use various materials to create.

Back when I was making works with sickness bags I’d collect them wherever I went. There aren’t many here. Sickness bags interest me a lot. No matter where you go, even if you’ve got nobody with you you’ll always find a sickness bag at your side

What large items do I have? There’s this dragon and phoenix pair. It probably dates back to the 1960s. It has a distinct pattern and wood grain

INTERVIEWER: Could you share the checklist of things you’d collect while travelling?

LEUNG MEE-PING: I would buy crystal balls and sickness bags. I’d pick the bobbles off people’s jumpers, but that’s a bit difficult to do in Thailand because people don’t wear jumpers there. Recently I’ve taken an interest in eyelashes. False lashes. The ones that wave up and down. I don’t know why I thought of that.

What’s interesting about working with different materials is that you aren’t purely creating something new. It might be mass-produced, but its broken state of existence shows traces of a series of processes. It’s different from other ready-made objects fresh from the factory. It’s precisely in this difference, when contrasted against a context of extreme similarity, that we can see the relationship within.

LEUNG MEE-PING: 10,000 [shoes]. If there are 180 in each box there will be fifty boxes, right? It should be around fifty boxes. A lot of my works are arranged by quantity. This is to emphasise the relationship between quantity and quality.

As soon as the quantity is high, meaning will emerge. One object alone speaks only to whatever I associate it with it. But when many objects come together the mere reality of their existence opens up more room for you to insert your thoughts.

Here are two boxes. Two boxes of teabags. They weren’t specially infused [for art-making], they’re just the ones I used to drink tea at home. The longer [the teabags] were sundried—the teabags were wet when I piled them together—the darker the colour would become. As dark as black coffee. Once a teabag is consumed the joy’s over. All thoughts are gone/ You don't feel the pain. But as you hold it in your hand, you’re no longer simply searching for its symbolic meaning because symbols can be made up.

Why would you stare at them for so long? Why would watch teabags decompose under the sun? Their colours are constantly changing. What is it about them that could draw you in so deeply?

Here are some other boxes that store my ‘hair shoes’. It’s clearly written here: 180 shoes made with black hair. I would label these boxes.

This is a patch of grey hair. It’s totally clean.

I found that dyed hair and golden hair are rich in layers. Strands of hair can be thick or thin. At that time, I was completely obsessed with hair. There was a point when I could feel the hairs while I was working. As I was weaving the hairs in my hands I know it sounds cliché but tears just came out. I really cried, all of a sudden, it felt like I was touching the people themselves. I was touching their heads, their hair. The notion of touching strangers, the feeling that I was connected with countless beings at once. I can only describe as very real

LEUNG MEE-PING: You’ve brought all the toys, right?

LEUNG’S ASSISTANT: Yep, there they are.

LEUNG MEE-PING: All of these are donations. We didn’t buy them Even if I was in a large chain store, I wouldn’t have any idea how to choose so many. How do we join them together? A magnet is inserted inside each toy. I’ll teach you how to cut open a hole.

To me, keeping animals in these gardens is actually a process of domestication. It’s a domestication of culture. These [stuffed animals] are economic ‘animals’, they're goods. As economic goods, they are certainly obedient. You have to pull hard to separate the magnets. But afterwards, if you place them near each other they will automatically come back together again. It’s a process of resistance.

We asked the Salvation Army about these very early on. They said they don’t collect second-hand stuffed animals. Eventually, most of them will be given away to community centres. But the ethnic minority community centres won’t be able to take them all.

If in the end no one's willing to take them, after a time, they'll be dumped in the landfills.

One of my students asked me what I was going to do with all these stuffed toys. She told me she had been sharing toys with her sister for a long time. Even now that she's studying at university, she still hasn’t been willing to give them up. Not giving up something is a choice. But she had to make a decision on whether to donate them. Actually, this dilemma represents something, when you're at a certain stage in life, you don't want to keep them around you anymore. It’s important to document this process of give and take.

If you don’t give or take what’s the point of life? If you give up something the thing that you give up also shapes who you are.

LEUNG MEE-PING: Do you need to move this every time you open your shop? Every time you open up, you have to move this stuff?

MR WONG: Almost every day.

LEUNG MEE-PING: This is Mr Wong.

MR WONG: Hello!

LEUNG MEE-PING: Not the dragon and phoenix pair. It's the long table and the round lamp with the character for ‘longevity’ on it. You let me know if anyone wants them and I'll return them to you. They don't belong to me. I'm just keeping them temporarily.

MR WONG: Is it the one that damaged some guy's car?

LEUNG MEE-PING: I think what makes this shop valuable is that the things here were dumped by people nearby, from this district but especially from neighbouring areas. People will abandon things which then get collected and eventually brought here where they are screened by Mr Wong. Here, you’ll find out the underlying context and important cultural developments behind each object.

‘ . . . reserve the right to use weapons’.

MR WONG: That was during the riot.

LEUNG MEE-PING: Oh my god! It was 1967. How did you get this? Did you find it in someone’s collection?

MR WONG: Right.

WOMAN: It’s heavy.

LEUNG MEE-PING: After weighing [the refuse], she’ll put it here.

WOMAN: Are you ready to hit the road?

LEUNG MEE-PING: Yes, almost. Are we ready to go?

WONG YIYI: This area is probably reserved for high-end housing developments. The government has made plans for a metro station or whatever.

LEUNG MEE-PING: These buildings will be the last treasure troves.

WONG YIYI: I guess it’s more worthwhile to build houses than keep such [garbage].

LEUNG MEE-PING: From time to time, I’ll drop by. What do I see? The same things come and go. People are always dumping the same things. You’re constantly seeing the same things. But this is the repetition of our daily lives. This is an element of everyday life that’s just invisible to us. It’s so beautiful, don’t you think? To me, this is so beautiful.

They might consider this to be just a job. But to me they’re sorting and categorising the things we abandon in the community before they’re taken for recycling. As these things are being recycled, products are still being manufactured in factories and at the end of their lifecycle these products will come back and be left here. This linkage . . . I think from an artist’s perspective, or let’s say if you’re creating something, you don’t need to be an artist, your observation, your sensibility are in fact forms of power that you can play with while you’re creating or that can support you in your ability to create.

(Original language: Mandarin)

ZHANG XIAOGANG: It was 1994 when this work became the starting point of a series of paintings. Its inspiration and preparation began in the second half of 1993. It was simply triggered by the discovery of an old family photo which made me wonder why the photo touched me so much. So many things are embodied in history that we have neglected in the past. When I looked at the family photo, I saw my parents in their youth which contrasted with ours, and I was deeply moved.

This concept of ‘family’ is very meaningful because I feel that the Big Family series has been influenced by my own family. ‘Family’ also relates to the environment in which I live I was very much concerned with the changes in my family. Besides, I was influenced by where I lived I ate, lived, taught, and did my creative work, everything.

There in a unit at the courtyard of my school; I spent my days there and felt that it became my family too. Human relationships were so complicated. However, the birth of my child in 1994 brought changes to my family. It affected my personal life greatly. I associated the appearance of a child in the sitting room with my own childhood and youth. This added some depth to the ‘family’ concept. It was no longer a superficial idea about public and private relationships. It could be, like the name given to the work a bit later, related to bloodlines.

I like to add in a little colour amongst the black and white like shining dots and red lines to emphasise the changes made. However, the colours are not warm/cool, but related to black/white. The colours are tones and not colours. The concept of the red lines was initially influenced by Frida Kahlo although hers had another meaning which was the relationship between one life and another. I wanted to string these people together. They might be relatives, friends or unrelated. I wanted to string them together like a network to create the feeling of a family.

HENRY STEINER: I would dare say that a designer can only be as good as his clients. And if you’ve got a designer who wants to do things, you use them.

I’ve done a lot of work for clients who have ‘Hong Kong’ in their name, like Hong Kong Bank, Hongkong Land, Hong Kong Shanghai Hotels, Hong Kong air, etc. I think there’s no question that it’s branding Hong Kong.

I came [to Hong Kong] in 1961. I had been working for a publication called The Asia Magazine. One of its offices in New York, they decided that bit by bit they would come to Hong Kong. I decided to give it a go.

One of the ways I was well prepared when I came to Hong Kong was that I had had a lot of ammunition. My weapons were twofold: concept and contrast.

I’ve always been fascinated by the Chinese visual culture, and the Japanese, and I’ve tried my best to work with them but also add that modernity that, as I said, something you know and something you don’t know.

One thing I’m quite proud of, for example, is the Dairy Farm identity, which gave absolute parity to the English and the Chinese. We used the same kind of lettering, although one was in the Latin alphabet and one was in Chinese characters. We made them look the same. We used the same colours. They were the same size. They were interchangeable. And that shows a kind of mutual respect.

Once I started my company, we took on all kinds of projects. One of them was doing the banknotes with HSBC. I used the bank’s appearance. The old building of the bank. The imagery was quite distinctive. And I used the lions as the mascots of the bank.

You had to have something that would strike the viewer. That would make your product, whatever you were selling, stand out from its competitors, and also from the style of whatever was going on so that you had something distinctive. I wasn’t typecast as being a hotel designer or a publication designer or a banknote designer or somebody who did clubs, but just a kind of generalist as a designer. Whether it was a poster or a package or whatever.

The challenge is to make the work interesting—for somebody to look at the illustrations you have in your annual report or your brochure and not to make it a picture of something, but a picture. And a lot of people don’t understand the difference. What interests them is kind of the emotion, the concept, what you’re actually doing.

(Original language: Cantonese)

YEUNG TONG LUNG: To paint is to create a space beyond words. Does that make sense?

MAY FUNG: This is a photo, right?

YEUNG TONG LUNG: It is. I see them as photos.

There is a limitation of the frame per se. When you have a limitation, you can do something to remove or transcend it. There can be many ways. Let me add- Shut up. Shut up. I mean the limitations of living beings. Everyone, whether a painter or a maker, has to come face to face with their limitations, and choose their language. The reverse also works. Your choice [of language] exposes your limitations.

INTERVIEWER: So you have been waltzing with limitations?

YEUNG TONG LUNG: I like this term. Waltzing with.

MAY FUNG: This could have been left out.

YEUNG TONG LUNG: Right.

MAY FUNG: But you placed it here.

YEUNG TONG LUNG: It looks good there. [Laughs] It looks really good.

INTERVIEWER: As simple as that?

YEUNG TONG LUNG: Yes. If you see something good you don’t need to find an explanation for it. Right?

I was talking too much about this. This one should be an earlier work among this batch. This one should be earlier, around 1995 or 1993, 1994. This one is similar to that.

Some paintings look formless but their texture and depth are usually interconnected with those of figurative paintings. For example, I have been deeply interested in the ways that light transforms when it’s projected on a human body or object. I have always been interested in this. From abstract to so-called figurative styles, it is always applicable. The floor [in the painting] that you mentioned just now is to me also abstract. If you remove the upper part the bottom part is abstract, isn’t it? [Laughs]

INTERVIEWER: Why would you suddenly wish to become closer to the real world [in your works]?

YEUNG TONG LUNG: It’s practical. I am a father now. It’s very simple. What can you talk to a baby about? Art history? A child’s vision develops from obscurity to clarity. [My daughter] started to chase after light with her eyes drawing something for her near the lamp. She should know about it. I hardly tell anyone this story. Her godfather exposed it.

Kit. This one. Let me do it.

INTERVIEWER: You have painted a lot of large-scale works. What have you done with them when moving [to different studio locations]?

YEUNG TONG LUNG: I threw away plenty [of works]. That’s it. When you can’t move them, you can only throw them away. I think quite practically sometimes. If I had decided to keep all the paintings, perhaps today I could only have carried them around but not be able to paint. Right? It is only because I threw them away that I had the room to paint new ones. So I did. Yes, two more to go.

I believe anything of value will be resurfaced in my works, perhaps even without my knowing. There are many ways of discarding paintings. Some people really destroy them. I might have tried this, too, but very soon I did it differently in a much lazier way. I just put them on the street corner. Anyone could take them if they liked.

Oil painting is really a craft. You’ve always got something to do. What is your subject of the painting? I don’t really know myself. I just choose an entry point and the rest comes in in the process. For me, a painting is not about if the audience can or can’t understand anything about it. Rather, it’s about the intellectual space it creates for you to think. I think this is more important. As you paint you enter this state in which you don’t know what you are painting. Then you ask yourself, is this state real? It is a kind of struggle, a struggle with reality.

The reason why I draw figurative paintings is also a struggle. In figurative paintings, you start with something external, but what they try to convey is not about the external. They create other meanings. What matters to me is not artistic exploration, but the meaning of life. I simply bring out the meaning of life through artistic exploration. My life is finite. I would rather take this medium seriously and invest in it than switch between different media. It is a lifetime commitment to me. [If you describe] painting as being for passing time, it is not wrong, but there is a presumption to it. What does ‘passing time’ mean to you? You have to be responsible for your life so that you can pass your time in whichever way you like and no one can judge.

(Original language: Cantonese)

FAN HO: I actually prefer black and white. It’s not that I don’t take colour photographs, but I’ve realised one thing. Colours do not fit well in my world. Black and white offers me a distance. What kind of distance? A kind of distance from real life. I think this distance is very important. Real life is multicoloured. Black and white offers a sense of detachment. It allows audiences and viewers to develop their responses and offers the space and depth to ponder and contemplate my ideas.

I like the colour black. It has a kind of power, one that is great and mysterious. It’s like a power that rules over the world. I take photographs casually, with spontaneity. For example, when I lived on MacDonnell Road in the Mid-Levels in Central district, I would walk down from the Mid-Levels. Back then there was no MTR. I would take my camera with me, down from MacDonnell Road, walking the backstreets and narrow lanes through the haze, where there were ordinary folk: ordinary, grassroots, and minority people. The kind of ‘Hong Kong spirit’ that they represented is unforgettable. They constantly struggled to survive.

I always pay attention to the light. I consider photography as the art of light. The light needs to fit my needs, not to mention achieve contrast. So it’s important to wait for the right light. When I am inspired, I can express my state of mind at that moment, the way that I feel. The great writer Honoré de Balzac once said that art is nothing but to move. What a great way to put it.

This one, I have to be honest, I cannot claim credit for. Rather it’s a joke that God played on me. In fact, I wasn’t even taking pictures of the children. The negative was in a square format. I was actually photographing the tram lines. My first impression was that the photograph wasn’t any good. But as I looked at it, I found the two children on the side, which was even more fun and interesting. They were keeping each other company after school. It’s as if there is a kind of rhythm.

I enjoy cropping photographs. It’s like making a movie. I really enjoy the editing process. What’s it like? It can breathe new life into your work. The same goes for photography. That side is lifeless, and this side is alive? Cut that side off, then.

Truly good photographs are not taken with the camera. They come from inside you, your eyes, your brain, your heart, not some cold piece of equipment.

(Original language: Mandarin)

CAO FEI: I had to take many steps in the creation of Whose Utopia to gradually reach the final outcome. I started by asking the factory to distribute questionnaires to workers in different positions in the production line, and, in the end, I ended up with about twenty to thirty workers as participants in this project. I paid them regular weekly visits and conducted small-scale workshops with them. During this process, their stories gradually merged. In the film, I staged some of their unrealised wishes or dreams in the factory.

The film is divided into three parts. The first is called Imagination of Product. The team spent around half a year recording a large amount of documentary footage of different production lines. As for the sound effects, apart from the faintly heard sound of the machines, Zhang Anding also muted the ambient sound and then reorganised the different sound components. What you get is something that resembles the environment of the factory, yet with a certain touch of spirituality that brings out the sense of loneliness within the heart of the workers.

Then, the second part of the film is like a fairy tale, isn’t it? We see workers dancing different dances in the factory, including ballet and breakdance. This part ends with shots taken in their dormitory looking out onto the factory area and trucks delivering goods to faraway places.

The final part is composed of the portraits of each worker. I feel that many viewers will assume that this is a pure documentary when they watch the first part of the film. The fact that this is a light bulb factory is meaningful. It sheds light on our materialistic world yet without simultaneously lighting up its inside or lighting up the workers’ lives. This is why the film is called Whose Utopia. I omitted the question mark, and many people have asked me if it should be added. I always say no, because ‘whose’ is already a question pronoun. This is a question for us and for the viewers. That is: who is constructing our utopia?