Art and Design Tools for Social Changes
Friday, 5 June 2015, 11-12.30
Zurich University of the Arts, Toni-Areal, Pfingstweidstrasse 96, Zürich
Room 4.D12
Lecture with Siu King, School of Design, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Siu King is a member of the Community Museum Project (CMP), an independent curatorial group based in Hong Kong. CMP’s goal is to bring issues of community concern to public attention. Its principal method is so-called cultural scavenging. This means collecting, interpreting, visualizing, and showcase the city’s spectacles, personal anecdotes, vernacular artifacts, and the wealth of community relations in public culture.
The incessant urban re-development projects launched by the Urban Renewal Authority and by real estate developers in Hong Kong have been razing many local neighborhoods, grassroot communities, and vernacular cultures. The CMP was founded against this background.
In 2004, the CMP started the Street as Museum projects, which aim to visualize the community as a useful tool for generating not only community spectacles, but also community activism and social change. Siu King will present both the theory of cultural scavenging and different examples of projects in Hong Kong and elsewhere. Examples include “Photo-stocktaking at Lee Tung Street,” “Our Home, Shamshuipo,” and “The Museum of Complaints” in South Korea.
The lecture is addressed not only to Hong Kong aficionados, but also to those interested in new forms of art and design research. It will also cover questions on urban transformations in general, and which role might be played by the arts in those processes.
In cooperation with Public City, Institute for Contemporary Art Research