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Hongkong

Videoart from Hongkong
20/20 curated by Alvis Choi – biography

Curatorial statement
[20/20]

Time gives us a distance to look at ourselves and to be a grown up. This selection of the compilation [20/20] is a record of the voice of today’s twenty-something generation and the same generation twenty years ago. 20/20 is presenting the consciousness of Hong Kong in its most
popular format.
—–
Twenty years had passed. A new generation is born.
Twenty years ago, two historical events, the Tiananmen Square crackdown and the fall of the Berlin Wall both had its social political
and economical significance. One is being acknowledged and will be celebrated next week for a 20th year anniversary. The other is
deliberately forgotten and hidden. In 2009, the economic growth became the reason to forget and the reason to love our country.
20/20 is a collection of video that depicts the concern of these two generations with twenty years in between when they were/are both
in their twenties. (Text written in 2009)

Thickest Choi
Title of work/short synopsis
Complaint Song of Hong Kong

Hong Kong has been named ‘City of Complaints’ since the early 2000s. Numerous public demonstrations take place every year, and very few of the demands have been properly addressed by the establishment (e.g. Minimum wages and working hours; Universal suffrage). Grievances of the public were generally regarded as a Canton Pop Song here: categorized, easy to sing, and easy to forget. This video is NOT a propaganda piece or anything purposive. Instead, it is just a sewing-up of the existing local spectacles. Or it could be regarded as a combination of mediated social relations that was fragmented and isolated in this contemporary capitalist order.

short bio (max. 300 words in English)
COMPLAINTS CHOIR is an idea originated by two Finnish artists Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen. It is about gathering a group of people to voice their dissatisfactions about the cities they are living in through singing. After the great success of the first Complaints Choir in Birmingham, Complaints Choir has been initiated by many people over the world.

2.
name: Video: TAM Tat Wah / Music: SANSKRIT
Title of work/short synopsis
I Need to Get a Job

This title is what the song is about.

short bio (max. 300 words in English)
Tam Tat Wah – a Hong Kong based Videographer/Composer/Still Photographer.
Sanskrit – a Hong Kong independent band.

3.
Ernest Fung
Title of work
Ninety Five / Two or Three

95/23 Ninety Five/Two or Three was produced six years after the pro-democracy movement on 4th June 1989, two years before the handover of sovereignty of Hong Kong in 1997. Ernest Fung plays with the metaphor that Hong Kong is like a ping-pong, being thrown from one side to the other side, from one table to another table, from one colonization to another. The ping-pong is framed in the streets of Hong Kong. Performers without individual characteristics are simply carriers of the ping-pong, performing in the “Yen Pa Xi” theatrical style (a style favored by the Chinese Communist Party during the Cultural Revolution).

short bio (max. 300 words in English)
Fung Wai Ernest started independent video production when he was a student in interior design. His work “On the Road” won the Gold award in the Hong Kong Independent Short Film and Video Awards in 1996. He works in both the commercial and artistic fields. His first feature film was “Dangerous Girls” (1997) and his second film “Silver City” (1998). His video works include “Alice in Hong Kong” and have been exhibited in Japan, France and Germany. He also produces music videos for local pop singers and videos for concerts, such as “Tat Ming – Paris in Concert” and Anthony Wong’s “People Mountain People Sea”.

4.
Ellen Pau
Title of work/short synopsis
TV Game of the Year

A Simon Says video game with Li Peng (then-Chinese Premier during the June 4th Incident) as the leader and the others who emulate him.

short bio (max. 300 words in English)
Started as a self-taught video artist, Ellen Pau takes many roles in Hong Kong art scene – cinematographer, curator, art critic. Her single channel videos and video installation works are extensively exhibited worldwide. Ellen curated the first media art exhibition in Hong Kong Museum of Art – Digit@logue (2008). Ellen is the founder of Videotage and a director for the Microwave International New Media Arts Festival. In recent years, she expands her research to Asian new media art and works as an art consultant with her newly founded company Inter-Act Arts.

5.
VJ Ferrous
Title of work/short synopsis
Policy Address

The idea of this video emerged when Legislative Councilor, Raymond Wong Yuk-man threw a banana to Chief Executive Donald Tsang during the Policy Address. It marked the beginning of a new political culture in Hong Kong.

Donald Tsang (in the video): We want no extreme left, we want no extreme right, representing the middle-of-the-road policy of most of the bourgeoisie in Hong Kong. / Is your Chinese better than mine or my English better than yours? / ‘Naïve’ and ‘shallow’ is not the same!

short bio (max. 300 words in English)
VJ Ferrous (Audio-visual performance artist) the founder of Design Outhere.
He mainly works on a wide range of media including print, animation, motion graphics, graphic design, live visuals performance, video-art, interactive art and new approaches to the moving image. Moreover, he explores new possibilities in digital representation.
Over the past couple of years, VJ Ferrous has been performing visuals for a diverse range of projects such as Anteprima, agnès b, Christian Dior, Hong Kong Disneyland, Pierre Jouet, Estee Lauder, Bobbie Brown, Armin Van Buuren, Hong Kong Fashion Week, Elite Force Asia Tour, John OO Fleming – Ministry Of Sound and Hong Kong New Design Force…etc.
Creating immersive and physical representations in digital media, his work examines the tension between intangible media and the spatiotemporal coherence.
Collaborations with various musicians, artists, engineers and architects are important aspects in his work.

6.
ahshun aka bjornho
Title of work/short synopsis
I Love the Country But Not the Party

This song is released on YouTube 2 days before the 60th birthday of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), commonly known as China.

The name of this song plays with the double meaning of ‘nation’ and ‘rural area’ in ‘COUNTRY’ and the double meaning of ‘political group’ and ‘social gathering’ in ‘PARTY’. The Chinese title of the song applies the meaning of ‘rural area’ and ‘social gathering’ to avoid political actions from the Chinese government.

short bio (max. 300 words in English)
│ahshun aka bjornho │ Born in1984 . Majored in Creative Media in University│ Spent my early years in Mong Kok, grew up in Kowloon West, currently lives in Tai Po. He is a part-time band member. 
[ calling myself ] An artists. Lifetime goal: search for true love.

———————————————————–

Curatorial statement
Homemade Video from Hong Kong
Curated by Ellen Pau

Ever since Hong Kong has become the Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China in 1997, 10 years had gone. Are we closer to homeland or are we making ourselves home here? The compilation is recent video works of phenomenon and performances from the meme of the city.

Artists:

1.
Kwan Sheung-Chi

Title of work/short synopsis
A Flags-Raising-Lowering Ceremony at My Home’s Clothes Drying Rack

This piece is a respond to the 10th anniversary of the establishment of The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of The People’s Republic of China. The HKSAR regional flag was hand-painted by artist Lee Kit following the regulation of GB 16689-1996, the State’s Standards of The People’s Republic of China, issued by the State Authority of Technical Monitoring. The artist then asked his parents to perform a flags-raising-lowering ceremony at their home’s clothes drying rack, with the hand-painted flag, and the national flag of The People’s Republic of China and The United Kingdom.

short bio (max. 300 words in English)
Kwan Sheung Chi was born in 1980, Hong Kong. He obtained a third honor B.A. degree in Fine Art from The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2003. In 2002 “Kwan Sheung Chi Touring Series Exhibitions, Hong Kong” was toured in 10 major exhibition venues in Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Art Centre presented “A Retrospective of Kwan Sheung Chi”. He is also a founding member of local art groups, hkPARTg (Political Art Group) and Woofer Ten. He had been awarded the Starr Foundation Fellowship from the Asian Cultural Council, to take part in an international residency program in New York, USA.

2.
Eric Siu
Title of work/short synopsis
Super Cop World

Super Cop World is just an innocent play with a fictional action movie and imaginary classical video game. Jacky Chan’s fictional action collage is a coincidental match with Super Mario’s runs and jumps.

Montage in a film tries to evoke unique perception of time. The creative decision of montage gives illusion of virtual time, creates tension, triggers emotion and tells a story. What if the decision to montage is totally based on a rule driven structure? What if the continuity of images is not just based on shot-by-shot but also motion-to-motion?

Every game has a rule and a goal. For instance, Super Mario World requires players to keep going forward to save the Princess. Risk factors are inevitable and you have to interact with the space and the creatures to design when you would run or jump. In other words, you’re bringing live a narration of Mario while playing, which the story goes by chance, by how players perform. In Super Cop World, I tried to tell the story of Super Mario World by assembling Jacky Chan’s Action on to Mario’s Action. Jacky Chan therefore is running in a Super Mario Wonderland and sub-spaced in his fictional movie world.

What really transformed the montage decision is how I treat the footages while editing, I treat the footages just as a branch of motion. Besides depicting the meanings of the images, I make use of the character’s motion in them. I connect the motion of different shots which shadow Mario’s each and every movement. It is a type of montage-like animation: trying to make continuous movement by sequencing connectable motion.

Mario-driven Jacky runs in unexpected motion continuity, and the interaction of sub-movie-space and Mario Wonderland give complete new meanings to both Jacky and Mario (the movie and the game).

short bio
Eric Siu is a new media artist raised in Hong Kong and currently a graduate student of Design | Media Arts at UCLA. In 2008, he completed a 12-month cultural exchange and research project in the United States funded by the Lee Hysan Foundation, Asian Cultural Council. Eric’s video art and multi-media works have been shown both locally and internationally including USA, Australia, Japan, Korea, Germany, and Poland, amongst others.

3
Chilai Howard Cheng
Title of work/short synopsis
The Doors

Presented in a CCTV format, the video brought an old fashion Hong Kong to screen by screening a Hong Kong representative architecture—public housing.

short bio (max. 300 words in English)
Chilai Howard was born in 1986 in Hong Kong who loves to explore speculative affairs and experience different artistic productions. Focusing on moving images and mixed media installation. Previous works mostly related to society issues presented in personal believes and values. His works were screened in various festivals and exhibitions. Major festivals such as the Hong Kong International Film Festival, loop art video festival, subvision.kunst.festival.off. and October Contemporary etc. His works have also been shown in Berlin, Madrid, London, Barcelona, Hamburg, Austria, Seoul, Taiwan, Hong Kong etc.

4.
Forever Tarkovsky Club
Title of work/short synopsis
Half-Naked Christmas Party

We wish for a half-naked Christmas party.
where we will meet a lot of gorgeous young ladies
All of them will be half-naked
So let’s get ready for this crazy party

We have already lost too many interests
Too many companions have slipped away already
We wish for a half-naked Christmas party
where we can have fun with these crazy young ladies.

short bio (max. 300 words in English)
Forever Tarkovsky Club was a film club formed by a few indie band players. From the very first beginning, they watched films by Andrei Tarkovsky, so they named the film club as Forever Tarkovsky Club. It started to evolve then — the members sometimes have a feast, write poems and play guitar…And the most enjoyable events of all are, for one, Ah-P from My Little Airport recites a series of poems he wrote for whores, and the other namely, Ho Shan plays the experimental guitar noise he secretly holds up for years. With the rally from the other members, they teamed up the new band Forever Tarkovsky Club, which aims to create some inventive and catchy album for underground parties.

5.
Choi Sai Ho
Title of work/short synopsis
Star

Star illustrates the events of protecting the historic sites – Star Ferry Pier and Queen’s Pier. The result of the demolition of the piers gave a strong message and warning to public based on the lack of the Hong Kong heritage conservation policy and the concern of collective memory. It is also an inquiry of cultural amnesia beneath its fast-paced motion graphics with high rhythm sonic beats. The issues inspire the director to make artworks with his unique audio-visual interpretation illustrating the events by using his own images, frame-by-frame “pen strokes” paintings, video documenting the events, soundscape field recordings, newspaper cutting images, photo collage, etc.

short bio
Choi Sai Ho is an electronic musician and audio-visual artist. S.T. is his solo project. Sai Ho received classical music training since childhood. His works cover different types of music genres including electronica, downtempo, IDM, avant-garde, experimental, etc. He was selected as the first Hong Kong Chinese musician to join the Red Bull Music Academy 2006 in Melbourne, Australia. In 2008, Sai Ho was selected as the number 8 of the Hong Kong’s Top 20 Musicians by Hong Kong Time-Out Magazine. He collaborates with different kinds of artists, musicians and directors, and keeps working actively on audio-visual performances, live gigs, remixes, experimental short films, music score for films, etc. Looking for possibility, variety, diversity.

6.
Choi Sai Ho
Title of work/short synopsis
Label

short bio (max. 300 words in English)
Choi Sai Ho is an electronic musician and audio-visual artist. S.T. is his solo project. Sai Ho received classical music training since childhood. His works cover different types of music genres including electronica, downtempo, IDM, avant-garde, experimental, etc. He was selected as the first Hong Kong Chinese musician to join the Red Bull Music Academy 2006 in Melbourne, Australia. In 2008, Sai Ho was selected as the number 8 of the Hong Kong’s Top 20 Musicians by Hong Kong Time-Out Magazine. He collaborates with different kinds of artists, musicians and directors, and keeps working actively on audio-visual performances, live gigs, remixes, experimental short films, music score for films, etc. Looking for possibility, variety, diversity.