Art and culture: Hong Kong or the creation of a collective memoryстатья из журнала
Аннотация: Discussion of art and culture in Kong naturally leads to questions concerning Kong's cultural identity, which was the main theme of the cultural debates that preceded and followed the transfer of sovereignty to China. Identity, in this context, refers to the sum of values, practices and customs shared by an entire population. Questioning cultural identity is not specific to Kong and generally becomes an issue whenever a country or a people feel threatened or overwhelmed by a period of disruption and confusion. Chinese cultural identity as a whole has continually been put into question throughout its confrontation with Western civilization((1). In Kong, the question of identity, explored primarily within artistic and cultural circles, has resulted in a recreation of the past and a larger debate over the necessity to reconstitute collective memory in order to affirm the city's identity better in the face of an uncertain future.A specific culture under threatFor Kong, the great shake-up came with the announcement in 1984 of the plan to hand the territory over to China. While a major political disruption, the handover promised to be even more of a social and cultural upheaval since it was not a matter of decolonisation in the traditional sense but of a transformation from a liberal colonial regime to a communist regime, one that was completely foreign to the younger generations while familiar to a significant part of the elder generation that had fled that regime and sought refuge under British colonial protection. Nor was it possible for Kong to return to its pre-colonial culture since before the arrival of the British in 1841, Kong had been little more than a collection of fishing villages, even if there had been a few settlements during the Song Dynasty. For many years the city was a commercial and military port, a trading post where Europeans and Chinese conducted business.The Second World War and the threat of the Japanese brought an end to this peaceful situation, as the city became a zone of migration, a port of refuge and passage for people heading towards other horizons. Occupied by the Japanese, the city again went on to become a port of destination for a significant migration from the mainland after the proclama- tion of the People's Republic of China. From this point on, it was physically and culturally cut off from mainland China and was incorporated into a regime of trade. The city's identity was grounded in the overriding aim of export- ing all that was Made in Kong to markets around the world while the fundamental desire of most of its large immi- grant population was to survive, to secure housing, to raise children. While art in the sense of artistic production devel- oped slowly, people in Kong created their own popu- lar culture, a way of living that was different from that of the mainland, with its own leisure activities, and especially its own music and film culture that eventually spread through- out much of Asia. The emergence of this identity through the culture of everyday life was documented in a landmark exhibit curated by Matthew Turner and Oscar Ho of the Kong Art Centre in 1993 called Hong Kong Sixties, Designing Identity((2).In 1984, the initial reaction in Kong to the planned handover to China was relatively free of anxiety as Deng Xiaoping's series of reforms seemed promising. But the events of Tiananmen in 1989 hit Kong like a lighten- ing bolt and prompted thousands of people to take to the streets, something most of the protesters had never done before. The slightest rumour and every threat from up north caused tremors throughout the city and set off, during the final months, an effervescence that seemed to accelerate, as time seemed to telescope towards the fateful date.This apprehension was made visible in the work of the plas- tic artist Oscar Ho, who set out to record through drawings and short texts compiled in an illustrated journal he called Stories around Town the social and political events, cus- toms, legends, random news items, and oddities that cap- tured the attention of people in Kong at that time. …
Год издания: 2007
Авторы: Gérard Henry
Источник: China Perspectives
Ключевые слова: Hong Kong and Taiwan Politics, Socioeconomic Development in Asia
Открытый доступ: bronze
Том: 2007
Выпуск: 2