RESIST : SUSTAIN | Placelessness : Place identity | Transaction : Visual Culture | Gentrification : Material Memory
The film is premised on the questions: What happens to Architecture when the ephemeral program changes through time, leaving the building behind? Should old buildings be treated as discarded trash and accepted as part of the urban regeneration process? Or are they artifacts of value that can sustain the identity of a place? In the post-economic boom of Hong Kong—when progress has been focused on and measured by financial indices and capital-led developments— custodians of the city struggled to find a cultural identity through the purview of built heritage. Many valued landmarks were eradicated, and the city was reshaped in just a matter of decades. The speed of change has triggered the urgent demands by grassroots groups to call for preserving the imminent and disappearing buildings.
“Building on disappearance”, Hong Kong reinvents itself every few years, the constant rebuilding makes the city subtly unrecognizable. Architecture, because it is always assumed to be somewhere, is the first visual evidence of a city’s putative identity. In this regard, the old-town cityscape of Sham Shui Po exerts a particular fascination. This film explores the potentials of Exquisite Corpse and delves into ideas of heritage transformation through place identity, visual culture, and material memory.
The anchoring of the film is based on the disappearance of culture and the built heritage in the city. By adopting Hong Kong as the site of investigation and projection, and with the archive as a strategy to anticipate and counteract the disappearances, a set of critical responses were generated. The work shown is extracted from two short design-research exercises that have been developed over the past three years: a long scroll drawing requiring the participation of all studio students; and a 60 seconds film that began with a narrative. The common ground of the long drawing paper and the connecting themes enables the students to work both collaboratively and independently at the same time. While the use of cinematic technique allows for a direct engagement for storytelling that is spatial and chronicle.
CREDITS HWANG Cheng-Chun Patrick Executive film editors HUI Shing Lam Urszula SEDZIAK Text HUI Yuk Yi Sukey Music Biston Belularia by Guy Copeland Juiper aus 'Die Planeten' Op. 32 by Gustav Holst Pangea by Professor Kliq Scroll Drawings CHAN Pui Ni Penny, CHOI Lai Fei Jenny , KONG Cheuk Hang, LAU Hiu Yan , LAW Siu Shan, NING Hiu Kan Carol , WONG Ka Lok Victor , WONG Lok Hei , WU Tsz Wing Videos Hong Kong Archive 2037 Studio CHEUNG Kat Fu, Urszula SEDZIAK , WONG Ching Nam Hong Kong Archive 2047 Studio CHOI Lai Fei Jenny, WONG Ching Nam , WONG Ka Lok Victor Building Disappearance : Exquisite Corpse Studio GUO Mengdi, HUI Shing Lam, MA Ting Kwong , ZHANG Xiaoyun , ZHOU Ziqin