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Dark Fluid Collective: Clip 3
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In this third clip, the conversation starts with the topic of science fiction and dystopian fiction and how it can be used to reflect on issues of our present day. The artists comment on what these genres means to them, leading into a discussion on both the cultural value and the self-exploration that goes along with writing these stories., 10:40
Joanne Leow: I really like what you’re saying, as well, about shared…something like a shared empathy, because I think, on the one hand, when you’re talking about embodied performance it’s too…it’s almost the melding of a kind of relational, like feelings, but also very bodily—I mean it’s literally water, literally things coming up from people’s bodies, right, so that’s really interesting as a kind of resistance against that suppression. I wanted to ask, why this turn to science fiction, dystopian fiction? You know, thinking about it as…and the question I was posing, it is a very transnational tradition, like a lot of cultures have this idea of dystopia and science fiction, but I mean…what drew you guys to the genre? I know you’ve answered some of these questions, but…is it a way of kind of relating Hong Kong’s experience to other spaces as well? Or is it also about delving into Hong Kong’s experience and thinking about it through that kind of science fiction lens?
11:41
Angela Su: I think it’s a sort of…not only Hong Kong, I think, like all of the world with like Trump and North Korea and China, I think the world is, seemingly it’s coming to a disaster or whatever. So I think dystopia, or dystopian novel, it’s a good way to mirror our present and...and I don’t think that utopia is achievable anyway. So, with advancement of technology, especially in China, like people can pay with Wechat and, you know, they’re inventing robots to—as a medical doctor, like Chinese doctor. So, I mean, the world’s going crazy, how do we talk about what’s happening now? I think the best way is through science fiction, because if you write about the present, the world is moving so quickly, and then when the novel is published, after one year, two years, I mean, the world has already changed. So you have to think ahead in order to talk about what’s happening now.
12:45
Joanne Leow: Do you think, as writers—I mean, not as planners or politicians or administrators—what do you see your role in that kind of leap forward into time? You know, into a different…I don’t know, like when you’re writing your stories and you’re imagining this kind of leap, like how did that process happen for you, like why did you choose to do that?
13:08
Cally Yu: Tough questions, actually, it’s not easy to answer the questions.
Joanne Leow: That’s good, I’m doing my job (laughs).
Cally Yu: There’s so many conflicts, actually, because sometimes people expect a writer is kind of opinionated, and they want to have some solution or have some kind of reform to part the way for the future. But, to me somehow, writer is the observer, more an observer. Maybe you have other idea?
13:39
Pak-chye: (speaking in Mandarin).
I think when we started we were asking about our future. After the handover we did not have many ideas about the future. This was a problem. So this was one of the main reasons for us starting this project. But if you ask me if there are easy answers to this question of the future, and I don’t think so. When I was writing my story, I wanted to provoke discussion. But what kind of discussion can we have? The situation in the past few years has felt really despairing. Everyone is really unhappy. I did not want to make the story too melancholic because I did not want people to think it foolish. I think the tone of the story is one of grief in some sense. (14:47) To me, my story is not really about the future but about the past. The reason for this is in the 1950s and 70s, I tried to imagine what society was like and I tried to reproduce this in my story. Before I had no experience writing these longer stories. They gave me a limit of 15,000 characters, and I really did not understand what that meant. So I had to think about it for quite a few months before I could actually put it into words.
15:47 my story has references to Hong Kong of the old. And that has a relation to Hong Kong of today. So it’s a remembrance. From the 1980s, we saw many changes in HK, including industrial migration. My story is about exploitation being moved away. Industries being moved away and many changes. Hong Kong’s manufacturing industry and development has really slowed down. My story is also about this context.
17:33
Cally Yu: (starts to say something)—oh, sorry, sorry, continue.
(laughing)
Joanne Leow: Cally will take over. (laughing)
17:39
Cally Yu: No, I just…because I’m taking quite an opposite path. I think Pak-chye’s more contextualized into Hong Kong policy—land policy, or kind of regenerations. But actually, I’m more on inner…I want to ask more about how or what is the human being, sometime, somehow. And the Umbrella movement, actually, bring us—I think the most important question is how we treat ourselves, how to take our life journey, how…where we’re going, the next steps, so I want to have the more inner questions, to me. And actually when I’m writing, I want it more as a self-exploration, to me. And of course it’s not finished yet, this project’s only a starting point to me. I really want to explore more, more…what we are looking for, and what the basic desire, the basic…all the desire we’re facing, and what is freedom to us, or maybe…and how the new [is] challenging us. Of course, I’m a teacher too, so that’s why…I can understand that you have so many burning anger and burning questions for the society, and how we deal with this situation and how, reflectively, how we treat ourselves. Yeah, so this kind of a inner question. But his story is maybe more on the culture side.
18:59
Joanne Leow: I think you need both, right.
Cally Yu and Angela Su: Yeah, yeah.
Joanne Leow: It’s very complementary.
Angela Su: That’s why it’s an anthology (laughs).
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Dark Fluid Collective: Clip 4
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This clip focuses on the role of architecture and city spaces within Hong Kong. The artists comment on the impact of emerging city spaces and land reclamation—in particular how these spaces will effect the art community., Joanne Leow: on the one hand, you know, there’s one narrative of Hong Kong, which is just like, this is great, we’re reclaiming all this land, we’re building all this stuff, we’re making nature conservation areas, West Kowloon Cultural District’s going to be great, right, and they were just like, (sound of being unconvinced).
19:28
Angela Su: Depends who she talks to, right.
(laughing)
Joanne Leow: Yeah, so that’s one narrative, that it’s going great, like, you know, and it’s very—it’s a very spectacular and iconic narrative, because you actually have these buildings, right, you actually have this plot of land that did not exist before. And then on the other hand I hear this deep anxiety from people who are like, where are we going, what’s happening here? I mean, all these changes, you can actually see the physical changes having psychological effects, on the young people, you were saying, but also on the rest of the population. So, I mean, I wanted to ask your opinion, I wanted to hear you guys talk a little bit more about that relationship between the immense architectural and infrastructural changes that are occurring in Hong Kong and that kind of psychology of like, you know, the people, which I think you do tap into when you think of your anthology, right, because you’re thinking of these masses of people too, yeah. Sorry (laughing), that’s a really hard question.
20:27
Angela Su: I don’t think we thought about architecture that much. We did some free workshops together, and I invited Andio Lai—he is a graphic artist—to imagine the cityscape of Hong Kong in the future. So, the way he thought about it is, like, he conceptualized it as like a two-layer city, like a developer would 3D print some pillar and then put this pillar in the middle of like, old district like here, a few pillars here and there, and built another layer over, like a canopy on top of the older district. So, it’s going to be like sort of a iPhone, Apple kind of aesthetic, all-white Zaha Hadid kind of thing. I mean, it’s—again, it’s about the discussion about how real estate developers, corporates exploit the rest of the population, and this is deeply ingrained in our culture.
21:29
Joanne Leow: And who does space belong to, who can inherit it, yeah.
21:33
Pak-chye: (speaking in Mandarin).
(others occasionally add comments in Mandarin).
This is a new city, there is a new city within Hong Kong. This land is for mainland Chinese who want money and power. The developments in this area have half been bought up by people who are profit-driven. The other group of people who have bought up these developments are those Hong Kongers who are willing to cooperate and collaborate with these mainlanders.
22:08 we are talking about the Elements development [in Tsim Shah Tsui]. The architecture of this whole development is really interesting. It is a podium below and then there are different high rises on the top. It’s really ugly. When you look at it from Hong Kong Island, it really does not look good. So everybody makes a joke about it. But if you look at how it is organized in space, it is an island unto itself. There is nothing just outside of it, no street life that we have become used to in Hong Kong. It’s a gated community. And its interior will be connected to the new high speed rail. This high speed rail will allow people to come back and forth from Beijing. And in the future, the largest arts district will be here. This whole new quarter, I don’t know how it would be in the future, but the entire project was given to one company to develop. This means that this whole area is a prime area. We have a lot of laws that govern public spaces that won’t apply here. The whole area will be a private space and that really changes what you can do there without government oversight.
23:57 before this, the private spaces we had weren’t such large ones, only a small housing estate, a private house. But this is not just a small space, it is quite a large quarter. So when you see this, the laws and rights won’t apply in these spaces. And whatever influence China has will be spatially emplaced here, in Hong Kong.
24:39
Joanne Leow: So is this on the reclaimed land, or…?
(talking over each other)
Angela Su: Yes, where M plus is. So the border is kind of extending to the—in the middle of the city.
24:52
Pak-chye: (speaking in Mandarin)
This will have a lot of impact on the arts community. This will give the government a lot more control. In the earliest iteration with the British, this land was originally conceived of as a “promised land” for affordable housing. It was for new housing for the inhabitants of older quarters in the city, they would move to a place closer to the sea. But slowly, bit by bit, the government seemed to “forget” this project. And when we finally started talking about it again it had turned into an Arts District in West Kowloon. Then they tried to get the artists’ support for this project. But the artists didn’t know the background of this. They didn’t understand the promise of this land. We just thought about what we can gain from it. Could we get a gallery space? We asked questions about the kind of funding we could receive from this development. And the government was very happy with this discussion and the original plan seemed to be overturned by a public consultation. And yet now the arts groups may not even get a part of this. Who can participate in this will probably be larger groups.
26:34
Angela Su: (speaking in Mandarin)…When I first heard about it, what the government said was they have a sum money that they can use to develop the arts. So they either build the West Kowloon or nothing. So, there’s not much of a choice anyway, so that’s why…
Cally: …a lot of people are, yeah
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Dark Fluid Collective: Clip 5
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In this conclusion to the interview, the artists remark on the idea of imagining a future for the space of Hong Kong. Discussing the possibility ( or lack thereof) for hope and change and the movement from writing one person towards a collective—and the implicit trust needed for such a collective., Joanne Leow: I think I’m going to ask one more question, just to end with. This is so fascinating, thank-you guys I’m learning so much. It’s that last question, I know the writer is not necessarily supposed to be like a thought-reader or a visionary, but at the same time, you know, when we imagine other possibilities—being together, living together, and creating, producing different kinds of space, right, in Hong Kong, or in any city—what kinds…if you wanted to say something through that anthology, what kind of alternate vision of Hong Kong would you propose? I mean, not utopia, necessarily, right, like a no-place, but a kind of like a…grounded in the reality of Hong Kong in the moment, but thinking of, you know, the richness of a possible future, like, you know, aside from being sad and pessimistic about stuff (laughs). Is there one that…there’s that hope that you have? Angela’s like, no (laughs).
30:04
Angela Su: I don’t, I don’t. No. (laughing). Hope about the future.
Joanne Leow: Or an alternate vision that…
Angela Su: Actually, this is what we started out…imagine a future of Hong Kong. But we failed (laughing) doing that. We ended up talking about what’s happening now. So—but if you want to talk about any kind of hope, maybe, in the character and the story, because, like you said, the story is not really finished, it’s a short story, it could have been expanded. So I think the realization of the character, the central character, that—in what kind of situation he’s trapped in, I think that epiphany, it’s kind of a hint of maybe a hope, maybe? Because we don’t know what decision the character’s going to make.
Angela Su: That’s okay. I just think that Hong Kong is so chaotic, and there’s, like, any kind of possibility or variables, so I think that kind of variables is maybe our hope, because we can never predict what’s going to happen. On the other hand, technology is saying that this is our future, you know, there’s just one singular possibility, but no. There should be a variety of things that can happen.
34:19
Cally Yu: But to me, I think quite a lot about trust these days, and also about the stories too, the trust between people. From one person to a collective, I think that trust is the glue there. But in Hong Kong, very interesting, from the history of…from the story of the elderly, their community are just very at home and organic, and they would dismiss certainty, and then they come together in certainty. That kind of organic…I don’t know, issue-based, I don’t know, they’re making and the disappear is so interesting to me, and not planted. And that kind of freedom and that kind of—actually, it’s kind of trust. So we…not kind of a born thing, not that kind of wild system, or that kind of wild kind of a life out there bondings, not that way. Kind of very here and there, the easy, that kind of easy collective, I’m very interested in that kind. And I think that is Hong Kong.
35:18
Joanne Leow: Yeah, like improvisation, spontaneity, right.
Cally Yu: Yeah. Not necessary to be that kind of life-or-death things, yeah, but just okay, and then you go and then I welcome you come here, and that kind of makes sense, more makes sense in Hong Kong to me. And I’m thinking about this—because the elderly always told me something like that. They hate each other, actually. They sometimes hate each other. Because they’re so strong character, they hate each other all the time. But they know how to mix together and mingle together to do something. And then—okay, finish that thing, and then (sound).
(laughing)
35:54
Cally Yu: But that is very useful as a kind of living style, as kind of a strategy in their everyday life, and very fascinating to me
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Downtown Eastside Vancouver 1
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Image of the intersection of Alexander Street and Gore Avenue with shipping cranes and containers in the background.
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Downtown Eastside Vancouver 2
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Image of the intersection of Alexander Street and Gore Avenue with shipping cranes and containers in the background.
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Downtown Vancouver 1
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Image of statues of two men sitting on stools talking with Vancity Credit Union building in the background.
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Downtown Vancouver 2
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Image of construction being done on the side of a high-rise building surrounded by other tall buildings.