Screen Structures: Overview of Media Art Development in Hong Kong

In less than a decade, Hong Kong’s political economy has moved rapidly from an attitude of “positive non-intervention”, a common practice under the former British colonial rule, to the proactive role taken up by the SAR Screen Structures: government since the 1997 handover of Kong targeting the development of information Overview of technologies and tourism. Although the economic returns and technological Hongprogress Media Art Development from this restructuring far outweighof any concerns over cultural development, it has nevertheless brought about rapid social in Hong Kong transformation in the city’s urban landscape and had a significant impact on cultural production. Educational institutionsUniversity as well as the arts and cultural sector quickly responded by putting greater emphasis on multimedia projects, Alice Ming-wai Jim especially given the new funding opportunities. ChineseIn the last five years, the number of local electronic art festivals and exhibitions, The multimedia performances, and related activities has increased dramatically, culminating in the Arts, recent high visibility of media art in Hong Kong. Indeed, despite a recent study reporting in 2000 Fine the “alarming underdevelopment” of electronic arts in the region, there is emerging a definite of amalgamation of practices that can be increasingly described as Hong Kong media art.1 The following essay outlines the interrelationships between these practices and important shifts in means of distribution, instruction and exhibition. Department Not unlike its counterpart in mainland China, media art in Hong Kong has undergone a fast-forward development in the span of less than two decades, with its practitioners grappling with media aesthetics and politics Copyright which artists in Europe and North America have been exploring since the early sixties. Its beginnings can be traced to the history of experimental film and video in the late 1970s

150 and early eighties that was much more non-profit film organization, the Phoenix Cine congruous than it is today. During these years, Club eventually expanded their mandate to independent film productions (as they were include video with sponsorship from the Hong recognized then) of the Hong Kong New Wave Kong Urban Council, the government body directors – Ann Hui, Allen Fong, John Woo, overseeing cultural venues at that time. In among others – coincided with the emergence 1985 and 1986, their annual festival of local Kong of independent video practices. Cine club independent works, started in 1979 as the activities began in the early 1960s as part of Hong Kong Independent Short Film Festival, the youth culture phenomenon that resulted was renamed Alternative Film and VideoHong Festival from the fast growth in population. This decade to accommodate the slowly butof gradually not only witnessed the coming of age of the increasing number of submissions in video first generation of local-born Hong Kong format. With the final dissolution of the Phoenix Chinese, but also was concurrent with the Cine Club in 1986, Fung, Mo, Pau, and Wong introduction of 8-millimeter and 16-millimeter founded the video artist collective Videotage, film in Hong Kong. With no venues for the whose name Universityis composed from two words, screening of student, art, or experimental “video” and “montage”. With Pau as artistic films, cine clubs provided a means for local director since its inception, the group initially independent work to be produced, shown and aimed to continue with the efforts of the discussed, as well as the opportunity to view ChinesePhoenix Cine Club in producing an annual experimental films from all over the world. Most screening of local independent video productions, active in organizing screenings and discussions, The the first of which appeared in 1987, and to university students were among the first to facilitate collaborative artistic projects involving produce independent films. The earliest knownArts, video artists. Videotage has since then evolved experimental short film made in Hong Kong is into Hong Kong’s most established operation Exercise One by Ho Fan produced inFine 1966. dedicated to the production, distribution, and Given this historical context, it is not study of new media art in Hong Kong. surprising that many early practitionersof of video A recent example that underscored how as an art form, like May Fung Mei-wah, Ellen the history of experimental film and video is Pau Oi-lun, and Comyn Mo Man-yu, started connected to the current development of out as experimental filmmakers, with notable media art practices in Hong Kong was “i- works such as Fung’s Pieces (1977), Monologue GENERATIONs”, a simultaneous screening (1984), andDepartment Manipulation I – Zoom Collage programme and exhibition of independent, (1984), Pau’s Pleasure of Gloves (1984), and Mo’s experimental and alternative creations in Hong Moulting, Problem, and Hairy Ring, all 1984. Kong took place in September and October Members of the Phoenix Cine Club including 2001. Organized by the Hong Kong Film Fung, Mo, Pau, and Wong Chi Fai, for example, Archive, the programme was curated by Copyrightwould later become among the first generation veteran film/videomaker and cultural organizer of media artists and key players in the local May Fung. The series of screening programmes, contemporary art scene. Founded in 1974 by with over a hundred works, was dedicated to film critic and scriptwriter Kam Ping-hing as a local independent film and video from the

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1960s to the present and was by far the most cultural activist, arts administrator and stage comprehensive and researched presentation of director, as well as Zuni’s artistic director since local experimental productions to date. The 1985, is also considered one of Hong Kong’s exhibition featured two commissioned video pioneer video artists. Among other things, he installations in which six local artists were invited initiated the Asian American Film Festival in the to re-interpret or re-edit footage of well-known U.S. prior to his return to Hong Kong in the Kong Hong Kong New Wave filmmakers such as late 1970s. Back in Hong Kong in the early Clara Law, John Woo, Stephen Chiau, Wong 1980s, Yung began directing large-scale stage Kar-wai and Tsui Hark. Artists Phoebe Man productions that led to the founding Hongof Zuni. Ching-ying, Makin Fung Bing-fai, and Enoch Since its inception, Zuni has producedof more Cheung Hong-sang collaborated on Re-wind, than ninety original productions of alternative displayed as an architecturally-reconstructed theatre and multi-media performances and has stroboscope, and Monica Lee Wan-tim, Bobo been active in video, sound experimentation Lee Siu-ye, and Adam Wong Sou-ping worked and installation arts, often in collaboration with together on Cut-uncut, displayed on eighteen other groups,University as well as in the areas of art television monitors in a triangular setting. education and art criticism, and the lobbying This juxtaposition of a historical survey of for arts funding and arts policy. Zuni’s innovative local filmic productions with examples of performance-based activities were some of the contemporary media art, so clearly addressing Chinesefirst instances in which video was used in Hong their ties to Hong Kong cinema, spoke pointedly Kong art, underscoring the interdisciplinarity of to a complex history of interrelationships The media art as well as the potential of these between film, video, installation, and performance experimental crossovers. Exploring screen- that is often undermined in what few accountsArts, based media in combination with the stage, exist on local media art history in Hong Kong. dance (‘video dance’) and installation, as in Pau’s For example, in collaboration withFine the Hong Drained II (1988) which draws its imagery from Kong Arts Centre and the Goethe-Institut Hong a Zuni performance, as well as a means of Kong, the first international videoof art exhibition documenting performances, such as for in Hong Kong, featuring video works from the Yung’s Deep Structure of Chinese (Hong Kong) U.K., France, Germany, Japan, Canada and the Culture (1990), Zuni continues to this day to U.S., was organized in 1983 by Zuni Icosahedron, integrate high levels of video and now digital a newly formed multimedia artists collective. technologies in their numerous large-scale Curated byDepartment Roger Garcia, Michael Chan, and multimedia productions. Particularly well known James Wong, this was the first sponsored, for its specialization in political satire, the group collective attempt in Hong Kong to explore has also become a primary force since 1987 in media art as a form of aesthetic expression. advocating and developing international city- Well-known for its specialization in political to-city cultural exchange programmes with Copyrightsatire, Zuni Icosahedron is one of the longest artists and organizations from other parts of running avant-garde artist groups in Hong Kong. the world. Important vehicles for this have been It was founded in 1982 by Danny Yung Ning- their various touring multimedia performances, tsun, who, in addition to being an architect, including Journey to the East/One Table Two

152 Chairs (1T2C) (ongoing since 1997), Four Grand question of conceptualism, focusing on the Inventions (1999-2000), and the Video Circle definition of video art and the ontology of the programme started in 1996, which comprises medium and developing a new language of a video installation of 36 monitors arranged different from film and television. in a circle showing compilations of videoworks By the end of the 1980s, however, artists, by artists from major Asian cities. more organized, experienced and embedded Kong According to a recent HKADC study in in the historical event of the transition period 2001, the first public appearance of media art (1984-1997) and some witness to the tragic in Hong Kong was Tsai’s Cybernetic Art Exhibition, events of the “June Fourth Incident”Hong in June a solo exhibition by kinetic artist Tsai Wenying, 1989, had already begun to exploreof the politics a native of China (Fujian Province) based in of representation for Hong Kong, producing the U.S., at the in works that challenged the notions of television, October 1979. Although this first exposure to mass media and colonial narrative structures. media art (in the form of electronic art by a For example, the video compilation Only non-local artist) did not appear to have any Something ThatUniversity is About to Disappear Becomes traceable immediate impact on the local art an Image, the fifth video of the … Will Be scene, the introduction of domestic video Televised: Video Documents from Asia series camcorders and the subsequent establishment produced by Shu Lea Cheang for Satellite TV of artist collectives, media centres, and annual ChineseDeep Dish in New York in 1990, contains competitions in the mid-1980s started the era important works by Danny Yung and May Fung, of video production in Hong Kong. With the The Victor Chan, Kuan Punleong, Ellen Pau, and boom in the economy, more choices in video Comyn Mo interrogating cultural identity within equipment became available at the same timeArts, the context of current historical and political as prices became increasingly lower, making changes affecting Hong Kong. Also appearing video more affordable than film as Finea medium around this time were social commentaries and of expression for artists. documentaries, such as those recording the With the exception of worksof by several student demonstrations in Beijing in 1989 by Zuni members and a few others, such as Video Power, a non-profit community advocacy Videotable (1984) by Danny Yung and Jim Shum video group founded the previous year by which uses a spinning turntable to map out an Cheng Chi-hung and Mak Chi-heng. Video identity for Hong Kong, overtly political content Power has long been actively videotaping major was not aDepartment primary focus of early video art social events, some of which are considered production despite the fact that these politically sensitive, in order to provide an developments were concurrent with a period alternative media representation of social issues of intense search for local identity as Britain marking the transformations undergone by began its negotiations with China in 1982 Hong Kong. Some subjects of concern have Copyrightconcerning the 1997 handover. Instead early been the controversial Right of Abode debate works, such as Wong Chi-fai’s Room Temperature and the impact of old district redevelopment (1986), Johnny Au’s Pure Colour (1986), and projects on the community as well as the Ellen Pau’s Drained II (1988), delved into the experience of various marginalized social groups

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such as “cage people,” street hawkers, female interrogate issues of gender and cultural and juvenile victims of family violence. translation, while at the same time present a Here it is worthwhile to mention how wide range of approaches, themes, content and discourses on urban culture and local identity formats – complexify the critical framework of emerging from scholarship on the Hong Kong such discourses. New Wave have dominated the ways in which Today, video art continues to dominate Kong local video art, and contemporary art produced media art activities in Hong Kong, with relatively in the 1980s and 1990s in general, have been established institutionalized structures of framed. Ackbar Abbas’ Hong Kong: Culture and festivals, award competitions, workshopsHong and the Politics of Disappearance (1997) is a typical, screenings. The changeover fromof analog to but influential, example of both the recent digital technologies in the early 1990s also “crisis” and “postmodern” context-driven sustained if not further popularized the use of researches on Hong Kong and its cinema that video in artistic productions. Directly related has been extended to contemporary art and to this development was the concurrent revival art criticism of this period. Situating their critical of the Hong UniversityKong Independent Short Film analyses of cultural productions within the Competition, after several years in limbo, by historical specificities and cultural dilemmas of the Hong Kong Urban Council and the set up the angst-ridden pre-handover, pre-post of the first Hong Kong Independent Video handover, and now, post-handover periods, ChineseAwards by the in 1992, such reflectionist interpretations would argue organized by Jimmy Choi Kam-chun. The that all or most works from this period – in The showing of the award winners at the 18th Hong their trend towards what Abbas describes as a Kong International Film Festival the following “new localism” embedded in an aesthetics Arts,of year made 1993 for all intents and purposes urban realism – explicitly or implicitly refer to known as “the come-back year of Hong Kong the “97 complex” or Hong Kong asFine a “culture independent film and video production.” In of disappearance”.2 1995, with entries dwindling in number and also These prominent discoursesof obfuscate the partly in response to the increasing use of historical precedents of filmic and other cultural computers and video in filmmaking blurring the productions, institutions and pre-existing socio- distinctions between film and video, the Hong historical contexts, that have also contributed Kong Urban Council proposed the merging of to the cultural formation of local identity as the two competitions into the Hong Kong well as theDepartment emergence of independent film and Independent Short Film and Video Awards video productions from the 1960s and 1970s (HKIFVA). onwards. However, videoworks – such as May Funding for contemporary art in general in Fung’s The Second Sex (1986), and later on, Ellen Hong Kong is relatively scarce so many artists Pau’s Song of the Goddess (1992), about two have full-time professional jobs. This situation CopyrightCantonese operatic ‘stage sisters’, and Yau has also resulted in a high number of artists Ching’s documentary, Flow (1993), about the interested in researching and developing their life stories of a Chinese female artist who grew media art practices often going overseas to get up during the Cultural Revolution – which training and exposure. From the mid-1980s up

154 until 1997, this movement was particularly formal and critical engagements in the visual acute since it coincided with the high number arts, and commercial ventures for the mainstream of families and professionals moving abroad media industry. in response to fears and anxieties concerning By contrast, interactive computer art has the impending handover. The few years leading engaged only a small number of artists in Hong up to 1997 also saw the consolidation of a Kong. There are many reasons for this, including Kong diasporic community and an overseas artistic the lack of exhibition venues, the scarcity of community as well as an international media arts funding for production, research and cohort interested in following the events in development, and the general lack of audiencesHong Hong Kong. The result was a host of exhibitions and a market for contemporaryof art in Hong and events organized abroad that focused Kong – all of which inhibit local artists to create on the theme of the handover, giving many larger-scale, more technically-complex, high cost emerging contemporary artists in Hong Kong yet virtually unsalable work. Further, it is useful the opportunity to exhibit their works overseas to note that despite the popularity of video for the first time. art, exclusivelyUniversity video art exhibitions (as Apart from the Council for the Performing opposed to billeted screenings) – with perhaps Arts, which focuses on funding performance the exception of Open Cities: HKG>

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significant and major boon. Funding has furthered Moreover, given processes of globalization, the operations of fringe groups such as Zuni the historical and political situation, and lack of Icosahedron, Videotage, and Video Power, as well long-standing basic infrastructures, such as as private organizations such as Goethe-Institut educational opportunities, funding, and Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Arts Centre (both exhibition venues, which have forced many local significant and long-time active collaborators in artists to find these resources elsewhere – the Kong the presentation of media art exhibitions in Hong fact that Hong Kong media art undeniably Kong up until present day), enabling increased espouses an aesthetic vocabulary that is, for all exposure of media art to the local community intents and purposes, “international”,Hong has no and international audiences. One of the main doubt complicated theorizationsof on this form vehicles for this has been the annual Microwave of expression. Pau’s Recycling Cinema, for International Media Art Festival organized by example, in a carefully balanced play between Videotage. Since its inception in 1996, the festival the banal act of watching traffic pass through a has progressed from video to multi-media, lonely seaside highway and a concentrated interactive installations and net art and been absorption withUniversity the surface of the cinematic consolidating its international connections. image as it moves back and forth along a wide In the past five years, Hong Kong media arched screen, explores metaphors of urban art has been gaining wider recognition abroad, mobility in a global context, while at the same with more opportunities to participate in Chinesetime articulating the desire for a place called cultural exchanges, international exhibitions and home. As Hong Kong media art becomes more media art festivals, such as the Ars Electronica The diverse and established, it will be increasingly Festival in Austria, the European Media Arts difficult to define on the basis of worn-out Festival and Transmediale in Germany, ImageArts, cultural assumptions and art historical Forum Festival in Japan, Videobrasil in Brazil, conventions. the Kwangju Biennial in Korea, and Finethe Media The largest impact on development of Art Asia Pacific Festival and Asia-Pacific Triennial media art in the political sector has been the in Australia. For Hong Kong’s firstof appearance HKSAR government’s proactive role towards at the 49th Venice Biennale, the single-channel the development of information technologies and video installation version of Ellen Pau’s (IT) and the service industries in its promotion Recycling Cinema (1999-2001) and two of Ho of Hong Kong as “Asia’s World City.” This Siu-kee’s video installations were among the pointed focus on IT and cultural tourism works exhibited.Department4 Unfortunately, in the development has resulted in the educational, discourses surrounding many local and arts and cultural sectors also turning their international exhibitions of Hong Kong art, attention to multimedia-related activities in cultural cosmopolitanism and hybridity, in order to garner new opportunities for funding. paradoxical relation to the usual overused East As such, in recent years, the introduction of Copyrightmeets West construct, binaries of Chinese and media art programmes in academic institutions Western terms, and lingering post-97 readings, and its admission in conventional broad-based have remained the interpretive framework for art presenters such as museums have infused much of the art presented. new energy in the local development of media

156 art. The works from the Hong Kong exhibition Design and Technology launched in 1999. in Venice, for example, were subsequently Computer science departments are also shown that same year at the Hong Kong becoming more open to media art. In 2001, Museum of Art in conjunction with the 13th artist Young Hay, in collaboration with computer Hong Kong Art Biennial, remarkable for its scientists Horace Ip and Alex Tang at the Centre broadest inclusion to date of local installation for Innovative Applications of Internet and Kong and digital art, including works such as the digital Multimedia Technologies (AIMtech Centre) of video version of Hung Keung’s CD-ROM the City , successfully project Human Being and Moving Images (2001) launched the interactive performanceHong and video installations such as Miranda Tsui application Body Brush, winning ofan honorary Ngai’s Shoe Stories (2001) and Desmond Kum mention at Ars Electronica that same year. Chi-keung’s Salt Lake (1999). In 2000, one of Inspired by the action paintings of Jackson the inaugural exhibitions for the new Hong Pollock, this new human-computer interface Kong Heritage Museum was Art +01: A Digital enables the user to intuitively compose a real- Exploration, a survey of 2-D digital imaging, CD- time painting onUniversity a virtual 3-D canvas through ROM projects and interactive installations by simple body movements. ten local media artists, complete with a CD- High-end interactive art projects involving ROM exhibition catalogue . extensive collaborations between artists and With the inception of new programmes Chineseresearch centres such as Young Hay’s project, at tertiary institutions such as the Higher however, are few and far between. The Diploma in Multimedia Design and Technology The presence of media in academia and the museum at the School of Design, Hong Kong Polytechnic setting is still a relatively recent phenomenon. University, in 1999, and the first MFA programmeArts, Typically it is technologically low-end media art in Hong Kong, in Media Design and Technology, (video, video installation) that is still for the most at the School of Creative Media atFine the City part shown in smaller art spaces, as it is virtually University of Hong Kong, in 2001, a number of impossible for them to support larger, more interesting exhibitions presentingof faculty and costly undertakings. In addition to stabilizing graduate works using cutting-edge digital the space and resources for electronic arts, technologies have been held on university overcoming the emphasis on solely industry- campuses. For example, in 2000, the University oriented applications for media and Museum and Art Gallery of the University of preconceived relationships between art and Hong KongDepartment and the School of Design, Hong technology, electronic arts and fine arts, and Kong Polytechnic University, jointly presented where they can be shown, thus may be among Bits of You, Bytes of Me: An Aesthetic Dimension the most pressing tasks that lie ahead for local of Human-Machine Interface and Echo Bits: The media artists. Despite the ever-growing interest Creative Works of an E-Generation. The former in the field and the greater availability of media Copyrightfeatured the work of five members of the technologies, Hong Kong people still view teaching staff of the School of Design; the latter technology as something entirely functional. presented work by their students – graduates As Young Hay writes, “the ultimate challenge of the School’s Higher Diploma in Multimedia of media art lies not in how to catch up with

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the advance of digital technology, but the 1 The Development of Electronic Media Art in Hong Kong, a research project led by Christine Choy (Hong Kong: Hong turning-around of the rejection of technology Kong Arts Development Council, Film and Media Arts as expressions of humanity. Obviously, Committee, 28 February 2001), p. 2. 5 2 Ackbar Abbas, Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of this situation is not unique to Hong Kong.” Disappearance (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, Nonetheless, the creative and critical 1997), p. 28. 3 On the development of computer art in Hong Kong, see engagement with media has significantly Wong Wo Bik, “An Overview of Computer Art and Education in Hong Kong.” Leonardo 28:5 (1995), pp. 441- Kong enriched and expanded the larger narrative of 446; and Art+01 - A Digital Exploration, CD-ROM exhibition Hong Kong art. New media art in Hong Kong, catalogue (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Heritage Museum, Leisure and Cultural Services Department, 2000). it is hoped, will continue to grapple with and 4Warren Leung Chi-wo and Sara Wong Chi-hang’sHong be wary of old and emerging discourses about collaborative photo- and sculpture-based installation, City Cookie Project: Hong Kong Venice Version, wasof the other work local cultural productions, capricious trends of selected. 5Young Hay, “The Challenge We All Have to Face.” ISEA the international art world, and the screen Newsletter 90 (Dec 2002-Jan 2003). structures of the city in which it is produced.

Alice Ming-wai Jim is Curator of the Vancouver International University Centre for Contemporary Asian Art (Centre A)

Chinese The

Arts,

Fine of

Department

Copyright

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