Video Transcript
MIAO YING: I think the two words to describe the works at the Sigg Prize exhibition are ‘ominous’ and ‘naive’. ‘Ominous’ is the kind of danger that you don’t really know what’s going on. And then ‘naive’ addresses the work. A lot of the forms are really bright-coloured, and they are cartoonish.
I think website and the internet is really an enlightenment. [It’s] like an influencer; it can be a lifestyle. It really influenced my artistic style because [it’s] from [the] internet that I really appreciate the sense of humour and how people react to the issues. I think that’s the core of the internet. When I was first working with AI, people didn’t have the access to it, and now it is really a tool for [the] masses. They’re actually generating content, like now. I found it’s like we’re in an interesting relationship.
The work that will be shown at M+ is an almost four-year project that has three chapters. It’s called Pilgrimage into Warden XII. The first chapter, The Honor of the Shepherds, are six brains that we pre-trained for a really, really long time, [a] couple months. So, at the beginning, they don’t even know how human joints, you know, how we bend like there is a limit. So, the big data were fed [into the AI]. Chapter two is a film. The script was written completely by GPT-3, and I took the script, then I directed the film on [a] game engine. So, in the third chapter, all the models have already been trained, and they have been unleashed, and it’s chaos.
The website really serves as a guide, a menu of the whole project. I think those three chapters kind of witness the rise of AI to look into the future of, like, how are we going to deal with the [AI] technology. At the exhibition, there is going to be this physical installation. When you first came in, you’re greeted by the towers, and they look like Gothic medieval towers. And [you will see that] they will be torched, but they’re not torched all the way. So, I think that is a metaphor of the early phase of AI training. And so this is the third chapter. They’re already trained and torched and burned, like maybe being trained too much. So, they’re like black.
All chapters have to do with machine learning, which is the technique that I have been researching and working with the past couple of years. In my work, I always kind of seek for those nonsense narrative like my other website-like projects. There’s always this made-up ideological concept. It’s almost like a political lifestyle branding.
I think in my work, I’m trying to address it as if the artists were the slave to the AI. So that’s one possibility. Like, if the AI replace the artists, in that scenario, what is that gonna be? Who is going to shepherd the shepherds?
My concern [about AI] is that it’s going to be very pixelated. So, they learned all this big data from what existed on internet. And I think what that does is dangerous. It’s that it can really make our history pixelated. So, you don’t know what’s true anymore. For future human generations, say if they wanted to find something [online], [they’ll realise] the history is, like, being rewritten. It’s really hard to imagine.
Miao Ying: Pixelated Pasts with Hong Kong Sign Language
New media artist Miao Ying is known for projects and works that address Chinese internet culture. This complex and hyper-regulated realm, which she calls the ‘Chinternet’, necessitates a sense of self-censorship that Miao describes as being akin to Stockholm syndrome. Her recent works often take the forms of websites, GIFs, screenshots, and installations. Juxtaposing technologies and ideologies from the West with those from contemporary China, Miao’s projects highlight the politics, aesthetics, and consciousness created in the Chinternet.
As a dual citizen of the Chinternet and the World Wide Web, Miao creates works ranging from virtual simulations to installations and explores technology’s impact on our consciousness and daily life.
Miao’s work for the Sigg Prize 2023 exhibition comprises the three-chapter installation Pilgrimage into Walden XII (2019–2023), which is a live simulation of a future world governed by artificial intelligence (AI). The work envisions a medieval fantasy land built within a game engine. The installation utilises a machine learning system that generates a unique rendering with each viewing.
Chapter one presents six AI-powered ‘society shepherds’ who are trained on human behaviour by big data. These shepherds guide Walden XII and monitor its cockroach citizens.
Chapter two is a film scripted by GPT-3, a text-generating machine learning model. The movie depicts the tale of an imprisoned AI shepherd and his cockroach lover, who tries to rescue the shepherd by mining bitcoin.
Chapter three combines the concepts of the trilogy and is presented as a website and mobile app that are accessible via a QR code.
In this work, Miao invites viewers to explore Walden XII and reimagine their realities through a future where AI rules.
Luke Ching Chin Wai: Community as Canvas with Hong Kong Sign Language
Video Transcript
LUKE CHING CHIN WAI: [Cantonese] Hong Kong’s scenery is unique. Hong Kong is small, but it has a visual impact. It’s a place where things accumulate and become countless. A lot of my artwork deals with the idea of ‘multitudes’. One becomes two, three, four, five, six . . . until it becomes what we call ’a multitude’. We’re no longer two or three or four people. We become ’a community’.
Making art begins with observation. I’m just responding to the world around me. Everybody should observe the world around them. After I graduated, I decided to focus on observation. I took this photograph in Pok Fu Lam Village from the window of the room I rented at the time. I turned the room into a pinhole camera by narrowing the window. There’s no one to be seen anywhere. To me, this feeling echoed the issue of urban renewal at that time. It felt like the whole city was empty. These are ordinary, everyday objects, but we see this world upside-down, projected onto a wall. So, in this room, we can see things with renewed sensitivity.
Artists have a role to play. They have an advantage: the capacity to take a step back and look at things from a different perspective. Beginning in 2007, I began to have ideas about intervening in society, such as launching small movements. Movements like the Star Ferry Pier and Queen’s Pier movements led me to become more engaged (in society). I asked myself, beyond having my own creative space, ‘What is my relationship to society?’. To make an artwork, you have to be involved. So, I started to participate in these movements. It all started with this chair. I often had exhibitions at the Hong Kong Museum of Art, so I got to know the security guards who worked there. One day, I noticed how tired they were, and I asked them why. Until then, I hadn’t noticed that there were no chairs in the galleries, so I made this request in the guestbook on their behalf.
After 2014, there was a shift in the mood of Hong Kong’s social movements, a feeling of loss. At the time, there was a strange development in the chair movement. We persuaded more than ten enterprises to change their policies. It wasn’t because of me. I’m just a person who came to the forefront. The reason was that, at the time, a lot of people were hungry for change. If we look at things from a different perspective and see that there’s room for improvement in the system, then I think taking action is one role that artists can perform.
Having a fluid identity is a way of returning to one’s original state. I began to imagine taking on the identity of a security guard. And why shouldn’t I be a security guard? A very simple question. Why do we have these boundaries that so clearly determine what you do versus what I do?
Here is one of the places where I worked as a security guard: The Hong Kong Railway Museum. It’s the only museum without CCTV, so a lot of interesting things can happen here. I gradually realised that I was most interested in the time people spend at work. Because, in a certain sense, this is our greatest limitation. We should invest our imaginations here in order to improve one’s quality of life.
I emphasise repeatedly that I am not pretending to be a sanitation worker. It’s about exploring what a sanitation worker can do. Who are the people working for minimum wage? When I started, I saw it as a kind of research. Their job is a very interesting one. They have a particular perspective on the people of this city. What we discard, what we throw away, what we discover. They’re a step ahead of a lot of researchers.
Last year, at Art Basel, we launched a crowdfunding campaign at the 1a space booth. We raised funds to buy an advertisement in the MTR on behalf of sanitation workers, although we hadn’t decided what the ad’s topic would be. After working here for over a year and seeing how people throw things away, I was ready to make the advertisement. It calls on people to spare a thought for sanitation workers to understand what it’s like to handle rubbish. I think the advertisement has a very clear message, and those who allowed this advertisement are affirming the message. Sanitation workers have the right to publicly and justifiably tell their own stories in the places where they work. We have a kind of ability . . .a kind of ability that many people do not have. It is the ability to unveil something that’s overlooked and make people see it.
If I’m going to do projects related to society, I must start with the place I live. This way, the work gradually develops in a natural way. My more recent projects have taken place in Tai Po. I’ve made a lot of discoveries here. In recent years, I have put more emphasis on forms of inquiry. I want to explore how artists perform the role of citizens and how to discover problems that need addressing and turn them into a new creative medium. It’s not just making more works of art. It’s not saying ‘an ashtray is a work of art’.
CHING: What day is today? It’s my teacher’s twenty-year anniversary as a sanitation worker.
HA JIE: What teacher? I’m just a garbage lady.
LUKE: One, two, three.
HA JIE: You’re being silly.
CHING: This kind of interaction is very equal. I don’t need to pander to them. They don’t need to pander to me. We’re talking about some of the tools we use.
HA JIE: Mix the two together. If the broom you made isn’t useful, why not take it apart and make one like this? Isn’t it softer?
CHING: Brooms are interesting because many of their parts come from natural materials. We’re studying brooms made from fan palms. Fan palms can be found all around here. In Tai Po North, we found more than a dozen ways of making brooms. Different sanitation workers design brooms of their own according to their needs and preferences. To me, this is a way of helping us to see ‘them’. They are not all the same. Cleaning up fallen leaves seems like toil to a street sweeper. But to other people, sweeping can be a relaxing activity. So, we start to wonder: what if using these brooms was something that everybody could participate in? What would that be like? On this street, in particular, we find sweeping to be very pleasant. It’s a soothing space. When you come here, you feel peaceful and comfortable. We hope that various activities can lead to changes in this place.
If you do different things in one place, your network can expand and grow stronger. Each person is like a single pixel, the most basic of units. Together, people can piece together a whole image.
How long have I been making artwork like the one behind me? It’s been eight or nine years. For the cockroach workshops, I’ve been doing it for more than ten years. Labour issues are something I’ve worked on for many years. From 2007 until now, I’ve never done something for a little while and then stopped. If I can’t make the change happen, then I just press on and keep talking.
Because these things occupy a place in my life, so I may as well persevere and carry on.
Tina Liu: The Shape of Style with Hong Kong Sign Language
Video Transcript
(Original language: Cantonese)
TINA LIU: Throughout my career, I’ve never focused solely on one thing. Instead, I juggled tasks simultaneously, and I got to ‘play’ in different fields. ‘Play’ definitely doesn’t imply that I don’t take my work seriously.
I was born and raised in Hong Kong. I went to Canada during my teens. In 1978, I joined TVB (Television Broadcasting Limited) as an actress, where I had to perform, sing, and host. At the same time, I also ventured into the film industry and worked in various roles, including acting, producing, and assisting in directing. It was a boom time in Hong Kong from 1978 to 1980. Opportunities for innovation and new platforms arose. It was a rare opportunity.
City Magazine was so chic. It aligned with young people’s global pop culture sensitivity. City Magazine started without a long-term plan, our goal was to create a magazine for the city and reflect Hong Kong at the time. In 1982, we enlarged the magazine and changed its image entirely. William Chang helped us design the new cover, I did the cover models’ make-up and arranged everything.
We had a limited budget but wanted good results, we relied on our own resources. I often used items from my own home for shoots. For instance, a person we featured on our cover who never accepted invitations from any other publication to appear on their covers. This person was the writer Yi Shu, it was her 40th birthday. I gave her a black long-sleeved T-shirt, applied light makeup, and highlighted her long hair. As for the background, we used a blanket from my home. This blanket was a birthday present from my friend, singer George Lam.
At the time, Bowie Lam was new to the industry. He was a production assistant at my company Black & White Records. He was energetic and young. He was only in his twenties. For the cover concept, we had him sit in an inflatable pool that my daughter Yoyo used to have, and poured water on him from a ladder over and over again to capture the perfect shot. We finally chose this photo for the cover. Back then, we just wanted to have fun and work. We were like, ‘Can we do this? Let’s do it!’. We wouldn’t care about too much.
To be honest, only after working at City Magazine did I find my . . . how should I put it? ‘Natural talent’? In art and design. But having talent is not enough, you need opportunities to practice. At that time, everything I did was related to design or styling. It was like a playground for me to practice in. In a short period of time, my potential developed into a profession, I became an image consultant.
I consider the singer and song’s characteristics when designing record covers and the album’s concept. The information is integrated into the covers as the packaging serves, to showcase the singer and the music. For A Thousand Suns . . . I was intimately involved in its production, including song selection and recording, even knowing about the duet of Deanie Ip and Elisa Chan. I wanted the album to look gorgeous, splendid, and bright. When I saw a brocade fabric, I got inspiration instantly, and thought of designing a top for Deanie. I designed the album cover, starting from her image. Her hairstyle was a very clean ponytail. She wore traditional Cloisonne jewellery. I also did her makeup which carried a touch of Eastern aesthetics with feline flicks. The song A Thousand Suns was very passionate and powerful, I wanted to express a brilliant intensity like the heat of the sun, so that the colour and feeling of the music could be interwoven with the feeling, the brocade fabric gave me.
I felt a person’s ‘image’ was not only something necessary on screen or on stage. Not being a public figure doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pay attention to your image. Everyone’s appearance reflects something about one’s self-awareness or standards. We all face an audience daily. It’s just not necessarily on stage. My image consultancy firm Xia Qi Hall was where I put this thought into practice for ordinary people.
Costume designers play an important role in cinematic storytelling. We create and realise the story with costumes so the audience can forget the actors and be convinced they are the characters, identify them with their roles, and get absorbed in the story. ‘East Meets West 2011’ was quite a challenging job. As the main characters were all gods, we had to prepare costumes beyond modern clothes. For costumes they wore on earth, we designed according to a character’s personality. Their costumes in heaven had to share some connection with those on earth, while looking unique on their own. If directors look for something that is innovative, flexible, chic and interesting, I think I can deliver what they need.
As a member of the Hong Kong Film Arts Association. In recent years, I’ve put my ideas into action. My goal is to increase awareness and pass down the film art and costume design industry to future generations. To achieve this, we run courses, introducing our industry and expand students’ knowledge. Serving the film is like a hobby, and hobbies are about joy and playfulness.
I often use the word ‘play’. That’s because it reflects my attitude, I don’t mean to be irresponsible when I say ‘play’. I use the word to represent enjoyment. Although I’m now in my sixties, there’s still a lot to learn while working. It’s a kind of growth. My commitment to ‘playing’ and embracing joy remains unchanged. That’s my plan—I will continue to play on.
Unboxing the Ha Bik Chuen Archive with Hong Kong Sign Language
Video Transcript
VENNES CHENG: [Cantonese] Hello. I am Vennes Cheng, the Associate Curator of Hong Kong Visual Culture at M+.
CM YIP: [Cantonese] Hi, I am CM Yip, the Collection Archivist at M+.
VENNES CHENG: In front of us, you can see part of the Ha Bik Chuen Archive. Ha Bik Chuen is a significant modern artist in Hong Kong. His was active between the 1960s and 1980s. It was a time when [art] research was challenging and Hong Kong lacked formal art schools. So, if artists wanted to learn about artmaking what could they do? They would collect information piece by piece by themselves and compose their own collage books as a learning resource. Three institutions take care and manage the archive, M+, the University of Hong Kong, and Asia Art Archive.
CM YIP: The Ha Bik Chuen Archive at M+ contains over 200 boxes of items. It’s large in scale and we can see that Mr. Ha Bik Chuen is an organised person. According to Asia Art Archive’s records we learnt that he classified information into different categories. We’ll follow his original arrangement to preserve the integrity of the archive.
VENNES CHENG: In the M+ Collection Archives, we’ve catalogued three crucial parts from the Ha Bik Chuen Archive, one of them is falls under the category of visual research materials. The most eye-catching thing in Ha’s studio were these ‘Kodak boxes’ he used to store his visual research materials. He cut out printed materials and placed them into the boxes according to themes. For example, this box is titled ‘Chapter of Hong Kong’ , you can expect to find symbols of Hong Kong, such as a junk boats. Surprisingly, you won’t only find junk boats in Hong Kong, there are also junk boats from other places in Asia, including Japan and Southeast Asia. Ha always described his studio as a ‘thinking studio’. He would contemplate, imagine, and create artworks inside it. He grouped things which were similar yet different in the same box, so that when you look at the items inside, it will not only cue different types of inspiration, but also inform you about the relationship between Hong Kong and other places at that time.
CM YIP: When we catalogued the items, we preserved the original titles named by Ha. The titles connect these fragmented pieces of information together, and allow visitors to see how materials in ‘Chapter of Hong Kong’ are connected.
VENNES CHENG: Some boxes are about Hong Kong and Asian visual culture. For example, this box titled ‘Expo 70’ contains information related to the Osaka World Expo in 1970, and local newspaper clippings from the time. It was the first time that Hong Kong had its own pavilion in a world expo, and a publicity campaign to promote Hong Kong to the world. Another key part of the archive is modified books.
VENNES CHENG: Ha re-edited existing books, or used folders to compile information of different topics. For this book titled ‘Catalogue of Characters’, you can see the laughing man painted by Chinese contemporary artist Yue Minjun on the cover. Ha collected different printed materials and created collages of various character to spark peoples imaginations. This page is an interesting example. You can see him placing a late Chinese leader next to a conductor. It could imply a certain meaning like he’s the commander and manages the overall situation.
CM YIP: These archival items have been stored in Mr. Ha’s studio for decades in an old ‘tong lau’ in To Kwa Wan. Since temperature and humidity were unstable there, some items were covered in dust, so, we’d clean them up with a brush. If the items start to break apart or stick together, we also carry out conservation treatments.
VENNES CHENG: Ha bought a camera in the early 1980s. From the 1980s to 2000, he documented openings of almost every art exhibition in Hong Kong, capturing interactions between artists. These photographic records need some special treatment from CM.
CM YIP: Correct. Ha Bik Chuen’s Archive mainly consists of paper materials. These photos are called ‘contact sheets’. After we finish cataloguing [them], we will store them in a relatively cool place to ensure their long-term preservation.
VENNES CHENG: Long-term preservation is crucial because these materials are valuable to researchers. Take this contact sheet as an example. It captures Ricky Yeung’s performance artwork in 1982 which I believe was from his early years, when he was still exploring what performance art was. 1982 was a time when Sino-British negotiations over Hong Kong had just begun. Hong Kong was in a state of unease in which people had no idea about their future. His performance art was intended to prompt viewers to think about our status at that time and in the future.
CM YIP: The Ha Bik Chuen Archive is now being catalogued and digitized. These archival materials will be made available to the public at the M+ Research Centre.
VENNES CHENG: M+ is a museum of visual culture. Visual culture encompasses not only interdisciplinary imagination, but also, objects and their relationship to the environment, climate and people of the time. Ha’s personal archive aligns with this idea offering insights into why a visual culture museum should preserve the legacy of such an exceptional artist.
Jes Fan: Beyond Appearances with Hong Kong Sign Language
Video Transcript
JES FAN: I guess I am more known for using biological substances and embedding them inside my sculptures or infusing them with my sculptures. But the desire really is to de-emphasise the kind of anthropomorphic centre of these substances that are often so tied to identity. The desire is to actually propose that working with these substances are actually not that different than working with plaster in my studio or, blowing glass, or carving fibreglass. ‘Interior landscape’, or ‘interior trauma’, is an experience that you can’t necessarily describe with language but an interiority that you can only feel. The word’ Sites of Wounding’ Actually, I stole it from an instruction manual that describes how to harvest agarwood incense out of these trees. It describes these sites of when they either drill a hole in the tree or, carve out a tree, or chop the tree; they call it the site of wounding.
Essentially, to have agarwood, the tree has to endure some sort of injury, and then the tree has an immune response. Like without the injury, the tree is actually quite porous that exhibits traits of ability to regenerate in sites of wounding where sites of where they’re injured. It’s a narrative that I’m trying to unpack that touches upon not just this idea of belonging but also this idea of using these non-human bodies as raw materials to inform some sort of trauma within our human bodies that’s accrued culturally or socially.
This was in the Tokyo National Museum. And I found all these journals studying the interiority of these Kamakura Buddhas, what appears to be one thing: the interior has an entirely different experience. So, I spent a lot of time there experiencing these sculptures. In order to harvest [agarwood] there, I actually make clear what the shape of the wound is. You have to actually carve out the body. So that led me into doing CT scans of my body and printing my body, my interior body and making these sculptures that’s about interior landscape.
JES FAN: (Cantonese) These are cross-sections of my right leg obtained from a CT scan. There are six of them in total; this is one of them; the work on the wall is another. This time, I really want to interrogate the wall as an object, the wall as a material and the gallery as a material to work with. So, three works are actually embedded within the gallery walls. There’re slits in the walls that you can peer into.
JES FAN: Art and sciences are essentially just ways of questioning. They are not opposing in my world. I think, ultimately, what drew me into studying glass earlier when I was a student is I’m deeply fascinated by how things are made, what things are made out of, and ‘How do I make that?’. And pushing these questions, not just applying to objects but also applying to my body and my identity. Like, how is femininity formed? How is masculinity made? How is melanin made? If I keep pushing and pushing, what kind of absurdist question can I end up with? And same as art, I think they all arrive at just more questions.
Wang Tuo: Time Refracted with Hong Kong Sign Language
Video Transcript
WANG TUO: (Mandarin) The keywords of this series are ‘aftershock’ and ‘here and now’. The concept of ‘aftershock’ actually pertains to how we perceive the history of our current time and place. I began my artistic practice as a painter, but in the process of painting, I slowly discovered that different problems require different weapons to solve. It was probably then that I felt video might be a good idea.
Painting and video share many commonalities. How do we get to the point in discussions? We could add a buffer, a middle ground between a conclusion and how it’s discussed. The buffer is a pathway for viewers to gain understanding. Video and painting share similarities in this regard.
This project is titled The Northeast Tetralogy. It consists of four video works. I embarked on this project with inspiration drawn from my hometown in northeastern China, where there appear to be a lot of shamanic activities. Shamanism has given me inspiration of sorts. This shamanism is not shamanism related to religious fundamentalism. It’s more like a view of history extracted and rendered abstract. So, I transformed it into what I call ‘pan-shamanification’, a mechanism that tries to solve present problems.
When a person is troubled by uncertainty and unsolved problems in their space-time, can they become conduits? Their bodies could become gateways for souls from other dimensions, bringing alternative experiences and perspectives to help resolve their problems. For this project, I’ve put all four works into the same space like mountains piled upon each other. When you’re in the mountains, the complete view remains hidden from sight. The feelings these segments evoke may become your imagination of the mountains.
But the timeline of The Northeast Tetralogy starts with the May 4th Movement in 1919 and ends in 2019. The first chapter, Smoke and Fire, is about the 2018 killings in China committed by [convicted murderer] Zhang Koukou, who was sentenced to death in 2019. These killings to avenge his mum’s death undoubtedly broke the law. On the other hand, many people felt Zhang stood for a tradition now lost in China, a hero archetype that hadn’t shown its face in a long time. In the later stages of creating this work, the character Zhang led me to certain concepts, including appearing later in Distorting Words.
While filming Guo Qinguang, I wanted to find a setting similar to this. A young student finds a tree by a lotus pond and then hangs himself. In the last hundred years, these historical moments seem to be caught in a time warp and, in the end, become entangled. A line in Tungus describes something like my experience in different time and space in history.
In Tungus, the protagonists are two Korean soldiers. They participated in the Chinese Civil War. During the same time, in their homeland, the Jeju Uprising is happening. The final chapter, Wailing Requiem, felt like a parallel metaphor to make. Wailing Requiem takes seeds planted in previous chapters, stylistic relationships that couldn’t be clearly referenced and removes the veil between them.
In my work, people grapple with the dilemmas of their particular time and space in history. I use these dilemmas and organise them unrelentingly because when we look at history, we, too, feel pessimistic. Despite all their efforts, their problems could not be solved swiftly and promptly. Yet, by building upon our predecessors’ foundation of toil, we continue to try to solve the problems we face here and now. We may realise that we are situated in one of history’s aftershocks, and our present situation and actions may one day, too, become an aftershock.
Xie Nanxing: The Painted Struggle with Hong Kong Sign Language
Video Transcript
XIE NANXING: (Mandarin) The keyword of the triptych, ‘The Ballad of Pieter Picking His Teeth’, is ‘struggle’. It’s meant to be very dark and extremely absurd because imagine: the damage to the environment is done for sure. It’s a crippling tragedy. A demon in your heart wants out. It becomes a twisted form of expression. It’s a question. It’s three questions or more.
The work establishes a kind of dialogue with the viewer. However, in this dialogue, no one is asking you questions. You must infer the issues yourself. That’s why it’s a struggle. On this wall are some sketches I made at the time, sketches for the triptych. Their ideas stem from inspiration. All three paintings have to do with sewage. For instance, I was inspired by the vacuum trucks I see frequently on the streets. Especially the septic trucks that remove excrement and take them elsewhere for treatment.
I may have observed these things daily and unintentionally for years. And then, I found this aspect that stirred my emotions. I began to mull them [my emotions] over. I ended up making sketches that allowed me to start working. I imagine the city’s infrastructure, the construction of all the buildings, the development of communities, water pipes, water sources, and sources of human excrement and where it’s headed. What came to mind was, ‘What an interesting system it all is’. What interests me is the comparison of how people blindly head to the same pit of raw sewage, a cesspool where everything is lumped together, and there’s no distinction between real and surreal. In other words, life is shit. That’s it.
How do concrete objects come together? It’s an indescribable, abstract relationship. I believe many painters have had similar experiences. You’ll notice your painting [looks different] under sunlight. It’s because the paint is not always thick. It’s probably not uniform in thickness. So, you’ll notice thin and thick strokes, and you’ll realise the interplay of light completely transforms the artwork.
‘The Ballad of Pieter Picking His Teeth’ comprises three parts. One part is related to the Rorschach Test, the psychological test. The second part turns ‘diarrhoea’ into a monstrous image. The third features the demonisation of a sewage pumping situation in a park. The title ‘The Ballad of Pieter Picking His Teeth’ concerns folk ballads. The entire triptych evokes the tradition of poetry from the Middle Ages. It embodies story, description, mockery, as well as feelings and worldviews that can’t be put into words.
I believe this set of paintings projects very strong feelings and a strong sense of uncertainty. Between this pink wall and the work, the contrast is striking. At the same time, it’s as if the work has been excised from the space. I like this pink colour because it’s close to human skin. The theme of the work is people. Painting itself has the power to create scenes just like poetry. It’s poetry in the form of images. With paintings, you can’t tell others how they should perceive it because they may see different aspects of the work from you. Otherwise, it would have no relation to art and become [an] illustration or promotion.
It’s not only about what my work expresses. Viewers need to struggle to understand it. ‘In this work of yours, I read what I can read.’ I feel this is the process of the struggle.
Trevor Yeung: Hanging in Limbo with Hong Kong Sign Language
Video Transcript
TREVOR YEUNG: (Cantonese) These works look at the ideas of ‘review’ and ‘move on’. Dealing with one’s emotions is also about reviewing and moving on. To me, these two ideas refer to problems about making art or living life that I will need to resolve.
When I kept fish as a child, I learned that if you didn’t know how an aquarium’s ecosystem worked, the fish would die. You may not know everything about the fish you keep, but you do know that if you did something wrong, the entire tank would die.
Just because you seek to understand a system doesn’t mean you’re trying to control it but rather explore how to thrive in it. Many of my works are about interpersonal relationships. I find it difficult to communicate effectively with people. Some people ask me about my relationship with plants in my work. I often say they are performers. They participate in my creation. With them, I deliver my message.
If the money tree is just placed on the ground, you might not realise the braided trunks are pressing against one another. As the plant looks static, you won’t see the tension within it. But with these strings, the way they intertwine extends and becomes a tension beyond the plant. So, when you look at it, you see that the trees suffer hanging up there. The trees are actually pressing against themselves.
Take the pandemic; it is beyond our control. When you are hung in mid-air, however, you move even when it is as if you almost fall. You don’t really fall. The trees are in this state where they have not yet moved on.
Many artists have created many works about COVID-19. As for me, I experienced the SARS epidemic, and what I found unique about that is that it made us react less drastically this time to COVID. Instead, we thought about ways to handle problems or rather, we looked inward for themes or ideas. The works I made were about our quarantine experiences and the uncertainties we faced in Hong Kong, and that touches on a greater issue. For viewers outside Hong Kong, they might see the changes that are pertinent to their regions. The entire world is actually facing the same problem.
In Red Brighter, there is a billboard playing commercials on a loop, lighting up the whole of Victoria Harbour. It is about a kind of repetitiveness. As we look once again at a billboard playing the same thing, you might feel that the commercial becomes so imprinted on your mind you won’t find it strange anymore.
There are two paths for viewers; one requires you to queue up, and the other one doesn’t. The former leads to a room where two works are Mr Cuddle in a Hotel Room and Wall of a Hamster Cage (Mira Moon). That was like the queue you had at immigration waiting to be quarantined. If you choose not to experience it, you can walk right through it as if you didn’t leave Hong Kong these past few years. Night Mushroom Colon (M+) is actually the best way to reflect as we move on.
I am on my own, yet I am not in solitude. I am just being alone. It is about how you handle being alone and the way you adapt to it. The adapter is a metaphor for how we adapt to a space. What I now need to do most, or think my work needs to do the most, is getting its viewers to consider how they perceive their situations or how they deal with their emotions.
Everyone is experiencing all of this repeatedly. It comes down to how much reviewing you can do and how far you can move on. But then maybe you will never move on.
Yu Ji: Materials in Motion with Hong Kong Sign Language
Video Transcript
YU JI: (Mandarin) The keywords for my four works in the Sigg Prize exhibition are ‘sculpture’ and ‘recycle’. To me, sculpture is more than an orthodox medium for art-making or a form of expression. It encompasses my contemplation of materials, weight, form, and the volume of objects, as well as their relationship with their surroundings.
Recycling is about the relationships between the many materials I use in my practice. For my project over the past two years, I have been on the move, staying temporarily in different cities. How can I travel with my creations? And what must I let go of in the process? I think these considerations reflect a sort of sustainability which sees recycling as a way of life.
As for my artistic practice, I’m interested in natural forms and materials from nature. When I talk about nature, I mean urban nature, a natural environment shaped by our city. I don’t want to go back to the natural environment. I am more intrigued by how, as an ordinary person, I think about planting, ecology, and vegetation and the way I live.
I’ve always felt that stones are symbolic. People project their worship of nature onto stone structures. In cultures and religions across different regions, stones are important symbols. Concrete is made from stone as well. So, these materials and forms are, in fact, related.
Among the four pieces of work, The hammock piece is the most special. Viewers can see the form of a hammock containing construction waste collected around the city. What I made with my hands is the hammock itself. The material I used to weave it is quite flexible. Everything in it was collected and accumulated over the last few months with the help of the museum team from local sites. It is a work created by us together.
This work is closely connected with its surroundings and everyone involved. It has been an interactive experience evoking memories of their everyday environments. All the steel bars used in the larger piece were sourced from demolished residential buildings. When a building is demolished, the way things normally work is the steel bars in the site would be removed and recycled as metal waste. What I did here was recycle the deformed steel bars from the demolition sites. I wanted to keep their existing shapes and make them part of my sculpture.
Those ruins come from our everyday lives, making up the history of the entire city or memories of individuals. I want to get people thinking about our lives and the reality we live in and looking at things that are not entirely new or polished to consider what they mean to us and our lives.
Balkrishna V. Doshi: What is Architecture with Hong Kong Sign Language
Video Transcript
BALKRISHNA V. DOSHI: Architecture is not ‘building’; it is not a built form, but it is actually life itself.
ARIC CHEN: Do you mind talking about Le Corbusier . . .
DOSHI: Le Corbusier’s work was nation-building. I followed Le Corbusier in many, many ways. And I remember that Le Corbusier comes with a little file like this, a folder, yellow folder. And on one side, the programme is written: ‘Mill Owners’ Association, conference [room] for sixty’. I had to do a conference room, and Le Corbusier comes, and he talks about [how] ‘when people come, they move like this . . . so maybe it’s here . . . but where is the speaker? So, the speaker is here . . . then there are people sitting here . . . maybe somebody doesn’t want to sit and see, there’s a window here . . . and then they sit like this . . . and then there’s a column . . .’ and then he makes it like this. And so, I learned how one creates things one by one in a sequence.
[If] you are having your own identity, if you want to be what you are, and if you know what Indian aesthetics is, then find a contemporary version of that. Then you’re already doing something. You’re already creating your own ways of expression.
CEPT campus is a free campus. So, you have students, so you put [in] tables, and you make a plan. Then the ‘doors’[windows] must open fully; there is no air conditioning. So, I made three bays. The middle bay is small, and I had to put a toilet there and a staircase there. And I was thinking that if I am there and my teachers are there, and they’re having kaapi, they were going there for tea, and I want to catch them, so I should be able to stand in the balcony above the staircase and call them. So, then, you can always look at trees. There are, there are mango trees, forty mango trees. Every mango tree which was dying because of vibrations, I planted a neem tree. So, the tree[s] is very, very important. And there was a lower level, and the other was [a] higher level. So, if you combine the levels, you automatically get steps, and you’ll get those double heights, and not likely you got disconnection. This is really how the sectioning was. So, it was a juxtaposition of these . . . several ideas of surprises.
Actually, design comes from memories. Any design. Your background and your memories. Should things look like what we think they should? Second, do you really need to go the same straight way? Third one is that if you want, how do you get such beautiful light? [The] fourth one is, can I get the impression of the whole city? So, it's a truly mélange of many things which came up here. This is really an assembly of my memories.
Then I discovered that the best light is reflected light, like what you have now. Where you don’t get a hard shadow and the face or anything that you see looks very beautiful. So, [the] most important thing is: ‘How do we get that light which is bouncing light, and can that light bounce on the walls and then create a glow of light?’ And that is what I have tried in most of my buildings. So, in order to do that, then you’re also articulating volumes of apertures into the volume, and the moment you do that, then your space begins to change.
[The Gufa] So, it’s a really a place of what you can call ‘experiential architecture’. Pure experience of light, space, form, [and] structure. I remember going to the stone caves where you go below ground and you get little light, and you crawl there. And there’s a nice sensation of space, semi-dark. Or, when you went to the stepwell, you went right down there was a very different sensation that you get. So, this is what was underground. The other thing was breaking all the rules: ‘The floor has to be flat’, ‘the wall has to be staid’, ‘the window has to be proper’, and I said, ‘I will not do that at all’. It took me two years to conceive the building, which has no definition. It's a fluid building. There are all the myths about the… ancient… Sheshnag, you know, the tortoise, other things are below, you know. And they are waiting for the cosmos to communicate. So if the signal come they will rise. So that is how that cobra is and, uh, then those China mosaic.
So, what is architecture? Architecture is not a building. Architecture is a fluid symphony of spaces and light, and volume.
Video Credits
- Produced by
M+
- Hong Kong Sign Language
Arts With the Disabled Association Hong Kong
- Production
Moving Image Studio
- Producers
Kenji Wong Wai Kin, Chan Wing Chi
- Director of Photography
Fred Cheung
- Camera
Lau Tsz Hong, Rex Tse, Ip Yiu Tung Zachary
- Editor
Fred Cheung
- Colourist
Fred Cheung
- M+ Video Producer
Mimi Cheung
- M+ Curatorial Research
Isabella Tam, Ariadne Long, Chloe Wong
- M+ Text Editing
Amy Leung, LW Lam
- Special Thanks
Miao Ying, Chris Sullivan
A special thank you to Arts With the Disabled Association Hong Kong.
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