mMK n AAA <br>HistoriCITY: Session 1 / Koon Yeewan

Monday, September 24, 2007

Session 1 / Koon Yeewan

Random Jottings on Writing HK Arts

Work in progress, Sept 2007
Please no not cite without permission

Finding the appropriate label for a discussion on HK arts has been a constant headache amongst scholars, critics, curators and artists. East/West, local/global, and hybrid/glolocal are some of the terms of references that constantly crop up. Each have their own merits, some more than others, but many have been misused, misread and misinterpreted. More importantly, the arguments for and against these different typologies follow similar patterns because these terms belong to the same discourse of spatial politics.

As spatial references, they endorse geographies that operate along arguments of differences. For example, in order to be local, the implication is that there is a global, in order to have an East the West acts as the point of reference (difference). Terms such as hybrid and glolocal follow similar patterns even as they attempt to bridge issues of binaries, because in effect they circumscribe the centrality of precisely what they are against – hybridity suggests that there is a tangible “mass” identified as the West and identified as the East, and furthermore that these tangible “mass” are in themselves pure. Although we no longer talk about these issues in terms of identities of artists, we have simply displaced them onto space/place and territory. Glolocal is the crossing points of where the tensions of global and local meet. However, once again, they privilege cultural politics as being determined by spatiality. More recently, there have been research studies that attempt to look outside the glolocal/local logic by exploring local-to-local spatial dynamics and heretopia. However, the critical pedagogy is still situated in places of differences, and ultimately traced back to the East/West model, which I am shocked that we are still discussing as if it is a critical tool with currency. It is clumsy and misgiving, and deserves no place if we are to engage with the topic of HK arts as a serious subject.

I have many objections to the use of spatial politics as framing devices or typologies. Let me relay just two of them:

1) They erase place as a subjective construct. When we talk about the local or the global, I want to know who is defining the local, and the global: those from the outside looking in, or those on the inside looking out. Space, place and territories are the playgrounds of our imaginative communities that may be rooted in concrete subjects such as local café culture vis-à-vis the Starbucks. However, who decide that local café culture has social currency? Is it the movies or sub-cultures that have formed collective identities rooted in nostalgia (looking back at history/memories) to create spaces recognized as being “Hong Kong?” Is it not equally important to talk about communities – actual people who form these memories of place, rather treating place and space (West/East/local/hybrid) as objective criterions? Let's bring the subjectivity of the artist and the subject back into meaningful discussions.

2) They erase history. We examine art based on its value today or worth tomorrow, but not how it sits within a temporal network. Leo Ou-fan Lee described the problem of a “short-term memory” of HK – I think that is a very apt description. One symptom of that short-term memory is the lack of dialogue between older artists and younger ones. As an art historian, I find my training extremely useful in writing about HK art, because you can step back from the object, and from the artists’ statements. We are alert to the dangers of projecting back into history, rather than allowing history to have its own voice.

What are the alternatives? History, sociality, desire, gender, imaginations, the list is endless; there is a huge repertory of critical pedagogy that are simply not used enough. Until we can write critically about HK arts with diverse voice, and until we stop thinking along the “Us and Them” trajectory (and unfortunately, something that is evident in today's roundtable set-up), there is a danger of pampering to intellectual self-indulgence and turning Hong Kong into a mere fetish.

# posted by jaspar @ 2:25 PM