Hong Kong City Hall was founded in 1960 and was designed to shape HK as a community and a new society blended with East and West traditions.  City Hall is very important as it symbolizes the style of old colonialism and the transition from Chinese traditional style to an international style.  Underlying the social changes was Hong Kong’s pivotal economic shift away from regional exports to manufacture for Western markets which is a commercial and idealogical transformation.  Local life-styles also began to diverge from that of Taiwan or the Communist Mainland.  The population found itself for the first time, alienated from China and eventually contributed to the idea of “Citizenship" and “Community".  The idea was generally accepted by the most population in the late 1960s, and a sense of belonging was gradually built up.  For example, cantonese broadcasting, nine years free education and Clean Hong Kong Campaign, etc. All these help to promote the idea of ‘community’ and sense of belonging.  However, this kind of concepts and images are casted by the government, while the government also portrayed official representation of Hong Kong and of Hong Kong people.  The external presentations of the city of economically independency and western-style exportation were now absorbed into the self-perception and daily lives of Hong Kong people.  For examples, while the government portrayed images of smart, efficient, diligent female secretaries to promote exports or attract overseas investment, local factory workers dreamed of office jobs and more privileged young women adopted sharp modern fashions with a crispness of design enough to avoid any suggestion of the bar girl.  [editing]

SUMMARY OF:

“Postmodenism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism" by Fredric Jameson

Fredric Jameson points out that PostModernism and Modernism are fundamentally different from each other instead of merely stylistic differentiation. PostModernism is a period, which marks a particular time frame in history by periodization, than a style among different styles present at that time.

PostModernism is categorized by the Logic of Late Capitalism, that is about multinational corporations, globalized markets and mass consumption,fluidity of capital flow multinationally. Therefore, it, PostModernism, then have features like absence of absolute truth, focus on micro-narratives instead of meta-narrative, weak in historicity, deathlessness, mass cultures which has previously been thought as “kitsch".It is about separation and simulacrum.

For refuting the “stylistic" saying to PostModernism, Fredric Jameson identified that even government and intellectuals are unable to make moral judgements, that is to distinguish it as a particular style, as they have already being to fascinated with the salvational nature of high technology. The logic of Simulacrum, which older realities have now turned to visual mirage, did not only replicating the logic of Late Capitalism but intensified it, as it is replacing the realities. And everyone is now so immersed in this postmodernist space.

As the result, we missed the critical distance for making critiques/judgements, and simulations are everything that in our mind.

A space of disappearance refers to  Disappearance of Cultural self-invention of the Hong Kong subject .

Colonialism affects Hong Kong culture and political, whatever the past and future, it still influence after the handover of sovereignty to China.

There are three main ideas of Disappearance : ephemeral ,speed ( tele- congest of appearance) and concrete abstraction of social space which derived from unusual features  under Hong Kong colonial development— the floating identity of Hong Kong people( port mentality), one dimension of Hong Kong Development ( economic) and  don’t have strong cognition of being  Chinese due to the difference between Hong Kong and the mainland,China , both in culture and political.Hong Kong people perceive us have no culture because of misrecognition of culture, replacement and substitution of our culture in form of representation and self-representation and developing techniques of disappearance that response to a space of disappearance.

In fact, Hong Kong people are staging at the imminent danger of disappearing , this situation raised more concerns on people’s concept of Identity , Local , culture and subjectivity near the handover of 1997.

However, there are three temptations ( temptation of local, marginal and cosmopolitan ) which are too as a matter of course to impedes Hong Kong people searching for their subjectivity.

Subjectivity should not be assigned by people,but the process of mutation and negotiation between colonialism, capitalism and racism instead.Thus, arthur suggested people should keep on searching for their subjectivity by developing new cultural strategies and experiencing urban space.

In this way, distraction from Walter Benjamin and Siegfried Kracauer, little narrative of colonial city and tolerance to accept different people ‘s stance are important to keep ourselves distant from different fallacies under the over-changing and uncertain situation.Otherwise, the nature of imperialism did not change but it just appears in different forms and ways to impedes subjectivity of Hong Kong people Identity.

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The ever-changing landscape of urban spaces and social phenomena have been popular subjects among photographers. Like “flâneurs” (city wanderers), they walk around the city in order to experience it. Such photographers try to understand, participate in and portray the city while remain to be detached observers who display a critical attitude towards the uniformity, speed and anonymity of modern life in the city.

The photography exhibition “City Flâneur: Social Documentary Photography”, held in the Hong Kong Heritage Museum from 20 June 2010 to 3 January 2011, exhibited 260 works about different cities under 35 groups of artists’ lenses. They are presented under the themes of Street Photography, New Topographics Photography, Social Documentary Photography, and Conceptual and Manipulated Photography. After strolling around the exhibition gallery, I found it interesting how the curators categorize works under these themes.

Street Photography no doubt is consonant with the flâneur’s tendency toward detached but aesthetically attuned observation of the urban spaces. As the popularity of portable camera has risen, there is an increasing number of street photographers who document the social changes and landscape of the city. To the German philosopher Walter Benjamin, who brought up the term flâneur, a photographer should have a flâneur’s noble and gentlemanlike sentiment to see the city through the optical instruments. Chak Wai-leung and Yau Leung have illustrated this sentiment thoroughly through their works portraying the 50s and 60s Hong Kong. The black and white photographs, all in the right exposure and tone, show the street activities of old Hong Kong – children gathered and squatted reading comic books, hawkers in white underwear making cookies, workers demolishing buildings under bright sunlight, etc. Techniques of straight photography have been used, in that a pure vision of the city is shown like a reflection by a mirror. There is nonetheless a spice of the photographers’ personal rendering of the subjects in the photographs by their choices of decisive or poignant moment, for instance the reluctant face of the child having a haircut, which gives the audience a different experience of walks of life that they might have been too familiar with to notice. Chung Man-lurk’s works are portraits of celebrities, actors and singers between the 1960s and 80s. They are all finely executed, but how do these photographs reflect street culture? Why are these portraits categorized into Street Photography? One may suspect that it is because they fit in the unaccounted-for nostalgia uniqueness of works shown under this theme.

According to the curators, New Topographics Photography is a school using the technique of a detached angle to capture the environmental imagery of a place. Chan Kwong-yuen’s Megafauna series highlighted the appearance of the mega-portraits around us by using a large format camera. The photographer has observed that after the vanishment of titanic icons like Marx, Lenin and Mao, we began to worship consumerism and representations as evident by the mega advertisement hanged outside a building. The exquisitely fine details and vibrant colours of the photographs have created a strong visual impact. We can seldom look at our city in such an angle and width of view. “This alienated approach to the man made and human altered environment stirred up the viewer an indefinable sense of coldness.” (Guest curators of the exhibtion) Chan’s works are not only beautiful imagery of our city but also a forceful critique of a social phenomenon. Ng Sai-kit’s photographs of various districts of Hong Kong is perhaps less critical but more about experiences. The longitude photographs provide us with a wider horizontal view of the place yet at the same time limit the vertical width of view. Looking at his photographs, a Hong Kong resident may sweep across the frame in an attempt to identify familiar symbols that represent the particular district, and join individual’s pieces of memory of the place with what one sees in Ng’s photographs. One may find it strange when failing to recognize a place that he or she is familiar with and thus question, like the photographer, the coordinate of one’s existence in Hong Kong and the world.

Photographers of Social Documentary Photography “focus on the living society or the travelled countries they encountered” and “address a specific social issue by exploratory investigation”(Guest Curatorial Team). Wong Hi-sun’s black and white print of the Rural China Series depict farmers’ and their families’ lifestyle. Wong captured the rural residential and agricultural life of the farmers and how they began to replace their ancient rituals by more scientific way of farming and living. The photographer has included a text documentary of his trip to the rural area, which helps viewers understand his investigation and know more about farmers as one social group. Go Man-Shing’s Hong Kong Old Shops shows the lives of the owners of old shops, while Tse Chi-tak’s The Flâneur’s Vintage Prints from 90s and Wong Kan-tai’s Hong Kong Walled City 2002-2007 portray city landscape of residential areas of the low income classes. Not all works are investigation and documentary of particular social groups though. Sham Ka-ho’s How To Love Yourself captured portraits of individual and explores the relationship between self and self-image. Though these photographs are taken in the city, they do not show changes of the urban landscape nor do they critically document lives of a social group. Leong Ka Tai’s Hong Kong from the Back brings us to the “back” Hong Kong – lanes and alleys that hidden behind and among the skyscrapers, but again, they do not seem to fall into the theme and are more like street photographs. We can perhaps look at these photographs from a different perspective – as the curators have written, “social landscape photography reveals the artist’s sub-consciousness as projected from everyday scenarios” – that the photographer may be commenting on the startling rate of city’s development. Yet such critique can also be found in other photographers’ works under another themes. What makes photographs a social document – those depicting underprivileged and disadvantaged social groups? Or those taken in series that have taken the photographer quite some time to collect?

The last but not least theme is Conceptual and Manipulated Photography. It seems that photographs under the this theme happen to be filtered out because they are digitally altered, this fact, however, is not stated anywhere in the catalog or on the boards of the gallery. To an average viewer, having such a theme is as if photographs of other categories are ‘pure’ and non-manipulated, which is apparently not true. Many documentary photographs including street photography are adjusted in terms of tone, exposure, framing and others in order to give a nice visual effect or highlight a specific subject, so that new knowledge of a certain issue can be created and interpreted. It is appropriate to associate these works with the term “Conceptual”, as some of them, like Fung Kin-chung’s and Ma King-chu’s photographs, are cities that have been delved away from its exterior form and transformed into a pure conceptual connotation, and the resulted image is a “manifestation of the photographer’s philosophical speculation”(Guest Curatorial Team).

It makes one to contemplate when the Social Documentary Photography category is found under the main exhibition theme/title of “Social Documentary Photography”. Are all works exhibited documentary photography? Or just some of them are? Perhaps categorizing these photography works is as an easy and clear viewing guide for an exhibition targeting average spectators who do not treat these photographs as artworks but documentation of the past and present. In aesthetic sense, I doubt the curatorial method of identifying the genre of works by such a strict mean, when different art forms, including schools of photography, have seemed to merge into a diverse yet uniform stream of postmodern imagery.

座立於香港中文大學的火車站廣場的新民主女神像是一位美藉華裔藝術家陳維明先生創立的，是為了紀念六四事件二十一週年而造的。新民主女神像是由玻璃纖維所造，故此重量比較輕，需要用鐵索固定位置。民主女神像象徵著自由民主開明的精神思想，亦是歌頌一群為自由民主而出力的人們。民主女神像昂然的站立在廣場中央，右手執著火把，這個姿態的女神遠於一八三零年的西方早有出現。一八三零年法國爆發了七月革命，當時為歌頌一群反抗暴君的熱血戰士而繪畫了《自由引導人民》油畫。婦女右手執著紅旗，象徵婦女主義，而右手則象徵右派自由民主思想，赤著腳表示她對於追求自由民主的不顧一切，這些這些成為了一個又一個民主女神必備的特色和象徵。現代的民主女神右手手執火舉，像一盞明燈帶領著人們走向民主自由的道路。

女神跪拜

評「新民主女神」

文/ Lulu

 

這幾個月來，有關「新民主女神」的討論一直不絕於耳。由海關扣押，至時代廣場外被充公，再北角警署扣留，最後落戶中大，可謂一波幾折。就在喧鬧聲漸退之時，我才終於跟她碰面，說來都覺有點動作緩慢。來到中大廣場之上，才驚覺對女神的幻想是時候要粉碎了。

實在難以置信，前面的這個“女人仔”就是靠那粗糙的造形弄得滿城風雨、癲倒眾生嗎？我明白“內在美重要過外在美”的簡單道理，女神的背後意義固然不能忽視，可是 … 可是我真沒法把視線移離她的身段。終歸作為一件政治雕塑，不能說意義重大便大安旨意什麼都不顧吧。

難道，香港人真是如此需要一個民主女神？

因為政府強搶、中大拒放，於是人們爭相發聲力撐，為女神抗爭到底。但與此同時，有多少人真正思考女神的意義，又有多少人會真正評審女神的代表性？沒錯，二十多年來，六四未平反，中共不認錯，我們都不可以忘記那灘在天安門廣場外的鮮血，我們都需要延續八九民運以來大學生對國家民族的承擔。但就是這樣，凡被冠上六四相關的名字，都會顯得如此神聖且不可侵犯嗎？“民主”是何時開始把人們的思維都倒塞去？又何時開始變成一種無可置疑和無需反辯的制度？而“民主”又是要閉上眼去追求的嗎？

回到民主女神之上，要是只為激起公眾的情緒以引發討論和關注，那麼隨便換個方式就可，沒必要造個雕塑來。真的沒有雞蛋裡挑骨頭，那的確是張眼就能察見的缺失：造形笨拙且質感粗糙；體積旁大卻無氣勢；手執火把，火焰卻彷彿要熄滅似的。就好吧不再評外表，那麼談內在，卻內在有些什麼？不能否認的，女神明顯地欠缺一份內涵，那只不過是一個左移右取西方民主標記，卻沒注入意義的空殼罷了，憑什麼要人信服？

 

 

等待衍生的衍生

評「衍生的衍生」(Reproduction of Reproduction)

文/ Lulu評

 

「以油畫形式把截取的電影畫面再次呈現」，一如以往，周俊輝繼續將其對“再現”的看法套入作品，成就了「衍生的衍生」這第四次個人展覽。新作的場景轉至古代中國，並選取自重拍或改編的電影。但萬變不離其中，要探討的仍是“衍生”，即因演變而生的可能性。

周俊輝在他的電影繪畫系列中一直堅持“再現”和“衍生”，與此同時卻有群人一直質疑他是“吹大了”，認為“衍生”只不過是給“複製”找個冠冕堂皇的借口。坦坦白白，我對這批新作也沒太感興趣，大慨是看膩了吧。但對於那”吹大了”的說法，卻又有所保留。說到底，我還是認同他那套“衍生”的慨念和動機的，只是感覺其形式還未完善罷了。

周總是精妙地選取某些電影畫面，再以磁漆作媒體、繪畫為方式，將影畫重新呈現，且利用當中的對白來陳述自己的思想。透過這低調的安排，原本的對白就被賦予了全新的含意，語境亦因此得改變。這過程當中，作了的不單只是形式上的衍生，亦同樣是關係上（對白與畫面）的衍生。不過若要繼續如此為他申辯，就恐怕話多兼冗長了。反而他的創作過程，我倒感興趣。當一切在表面看來簡單的時候，我相信每一幅電影畫作的背後都是經過心思熟慮，確實花過不少心血時間吧。要從眾多電影裡選出一套合適的，再從這合適當中揀取一幕，這樣看來算不上什麼，可條件是定必要對該戲有一定認識了，而要認識，也就得作資料搜集和花時間理解，直到再創造的時候，大慨選擇改什麼，不改什麼都是不可忽視的一步。這個說來簡單行來複雜的篩選過程，不正正就是周一直想要表達的“再造”和“衍生”了嗎？ 那究竟是什麼地方出況子？

之前提過的“形式未完善”正是周之作品的一個大問題。在一個不錯的慨念和細密過程推動下，周所選擇的表現形式（電影繪畫）就顯得相對無力了。這些畫作，要麼就是像真度太高，於是無論看多少次，我還是一下子就連到原本的電影之上，根本再沒有衍生空間。要麼就是我沒看過該電影，根本沒有認識，結果又只會將它當作純粹一幅畫來看，卻想深一層，任何一幅畫，也有機會讓我們引申自己的解讀方式吧。因此周只是提出了“衍生”這個慨念，卻未成功使作品發揮“衍生”的作用。可幸是，這系列作品提醒了我們不用跟著作品框架走，算是鼓勵了一種“衍生”。

記得梁寶曾在言談間問我們：「較喜歡周俊輝還是周俊輝的畫？」，都不掩飾了，我就是喜歡他本人多一點，沒有為什麼。因此我會繼續期待他的不斷再造。當衍生再衍生繼續地衍生又衍生，然後終有一天東西都會被扯到天南地北，那個時候，一切又重新開始，舊的成新，新又成舊 . . . 誰叫地球是圓的。

 

 

漫遊於矛盾充塞的展覽間

評「城市漫遊者 – 社會紀實攝影」(City Flaneur: Social Documentary Photography)

文/ Lulu

 

大抵天生一副懶骨頭，對於沙田文化博物館的展覽總是提不起勁，始終山長兼水遠，因此可免則免。若非第二天要在梁寶的課作觀展討論，大慨也動不了身，結果避無可避的才在閉館前三小時沖沖趕往。出發前，於網上略略看過一些簡介，以免一頭霧水渾進去。嗯，「城市漫遊者 – 社會紀實攝影」展覽，搜尋結果都是關於香港的、城市空間的和社會變遷的，還有作品出自35個攝影師的，來頭似乎不小。

擔當著檢閱社會變遷和城市發展的大任，展覽共展出了260多件攝影作品， 並將之劃出四個範疇：街頭攝影、社會紀實攝影、新地景主義攝影和觀念及矯飾攝影，好讓大眾重溫1950年代至今的社會風貌。確實，我曾為這多樣性有過幻想，但大慨是我當時忘了何謂花多眼亂。直至踏入展館，我才發現實情是作品很多，卻帶點左併右湊的雜亂無序，無從入手。情形就似滿桌佳餚，卻不知要先吃什麼，又擔心吃不下，而即使吃得下又怕不消化。加上為了給四個範疇立下定義，於是進出口處及場內都滿佈相關文字，像要企圖灌輸什麼。也許這是策展人為了教育觀眾而設下的一個佈局，又也許是限制觀眾切入點的一種手法。不管有心或無意，總之就是感覺屹突。

而最叫人感不妥的，就是展覽主題和展出作品之間的南轅北轍。“城市漫遊者”與“社會紀實攝影”， 前者偏向從個人出發，後者則站在較客觀的立場，兩者明顯不盡相同，且有點背道而馳。再者，不難發現展覽中有不少與“社會紀實”不大相關的個人化作品。如賴朗騫的《有我在的天台景象》，以地上留下反覆曬乾的雨水漬和等待陽光曬乾的衣物說明無聲的消失，由此表達“我曾經存在”。又如馬琼珠的《距離的藍》，利用Google Map捉一片香港上空的雲，以表其懷鄉情感。此等存在主義、思鄉愁緒就最多只算得上是個人心靈的“紀實”，又究竟與社會何干？可更荒謬的是，展覽的第四部分“觀念及矯飾攝影”，明明有電腦技術的，有實驗性的，有後期加工的，或多或少都偏離真實了，卻都被歸入是次展覽當中，莫名奇妙。“社會紀實”與“超現實”， 毫無疑問是兩碼子的事，卻硬被扯在一起，著實來得牽強。如是者，此等矛盾就這樣不斷穿插於展覽當中，而我也在過程中不自覺地進入漫遊狀態，模模糊糊的，都不懂如何閱讀作品，只好見步行步。

策展人草率大意之策展手法確是叫人氣難平，弄得一肚子牢騷。不過另一邊廂，這是一個機會讓人思考攝影與社會之關係。近年，社會紀實攝影大熱，永利街、藍屋、天星皇后碼頭的保育重建與清折都引來一班攝影者爭相為歷史作紀錄，彷彿攝影在這不經不覺間就只淪為一件手到拿來的工具。在圖像依舊珍貴的年代，人們都不胡亂動用這回憶工具，可這個人人拿著相機的年代，人人都急著製造個人回憶，又急著把這堆回憶放到facebook和微博。喂，紀實攝影是一種使命呀，所製造的回憶不只屬於個人，亦該同屬於社會的。

釋放快門其實不單純只是一個動作而已，始終，香港攝影還是有漫漫長路要走。

 

 

之前在中大前寫的都是我的疑問，為什麼民主是女神像？所記念的＜六四事件＞在這個神像，這個空間又有多少關係？這些問題經我再思想後，都變的不重要了。

身為一個中國人，一個大學生，我知道六四事件是不可以忘記的。每一次重看六四的資料都感覺很震憾：學生們的勇敢，無畏政府的鎮壓，我心感敬佩。六四是中國的一件民主運動，反腐敗，反官倒，學生對國家未來的急切之心，希望用他們的力量向政府題出的要求是合理而且正確的，無奈國家面子大過天，「六四沒有死個任何一個人」正是中國政府的臭嘴臉會說的。我看出這事件對香港人來說，感受甚深。香港在回歸前都是無所依，回歸前看到「親生母親」是一個殺人不見血的女魔頭，當然震驚不已。如何自保？當然放個民主女神像傍身。但是，當我翻看資料，原來原民主女神像在六四那天被推倒。新民主女神像，可靠乎？

其實，重造民主女神像是為了紀念當天樹立她的學生們。那天上美國越戰紀念碑的堂，我聽到有兩種原因會留下事物來：因為會忘記所以要留下什麼來記住／因為你不會忘記，你會用來記念。我分不清兩那，但我在想這個民主女神像是不是因為怕我們忘記而留下來嗎？　六四事件都廿一周年了，學生當年的願望：中國民主，反腐敗，反官倒，都停滯不前，經濟發展無助社會道德價值完善。好人始終都是好人，壞人始終都壞。有一次，我和一個中國留學生談起六四，他說是的，他都知道「些」，對於國家的政治弊病，他都無何奈何，「有不錯的（經濟）發展便好」。看來，不會有另一次的六四事件了，新一代都沒有吃過文革的苦。所以，新民主女神在中大，是在看可以「全知」的香港大學生對祖國的政制有勇氣站出來嗎？

香港人最自豪的便是民主，自由，同時，香港人最怕的便是失去這兩元素。新民主女神像的意義應該大於她的外貌的！儘管她有很多不足之處，我們留她來等待更好的,"the best is yet to come".

今天，香港立了一個新民主女神像，他朝中國會有機會立一個代表民主的印記嗎？

“最好的，尚未來臨。”