CODE Hong Kong

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Code, developed in Hong Kong, was born from a wide ambition that had a before and is still being processed into an after. The after is a time-place where this catalogue happened and is still happening in your hands.

The before started in 2011, with the pro-ject Russian Roullette, developed in artistic residency at the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, in Warsaw, Po-land. The Portuguese performance collec-tive DEMO – six performers/researchers with training in different areas – set out to work on performatic intervention in urban space in collaboration with local commu-nities. Later on, Russian Roullete evolved to project Uwaga!, included in the Gui-marães 2012 European Capital of Culture programme, from which they co-directed a documentary. The two projects shared the desire to disrupt city dwellers´ everyday life with the unusual and to give citizens a chance to interact with the city, expressing their views.

Two Portuguese researchers/performers from DEMO - Gil Mac and Margarida Cabral - went to explore, in the East, the ways people responded to their cities, how they lived and experienced urban spaces and how they would react to, and inter-act with, a performatic intervention in

their public space. Furthermore, the art-ists wanted to initiate a dialogue between portuguese and chinese cultures that could develop, in a near future, into formal and informal partnerships. From the Uwaga! experience, they wanted to continue a re-search in three fundamental vectors, ma-terials and strategies: smart phones, card-board boxes and typography, and see how these could be expressed as artistic inter-faces and artistic objects in a complex cul-ture where ancestral tradition meets full-fledged industrialization.

Code took place from monday to sunday - October 28th to November 3rd - in which the artists set out to explore the landscape and urban spaces, human presence and ab-sence, technology and the multiple ways of building space identity, or building identity in urban space, and the peculiar feelings of both belonging and being an outcast.

In the first day they were taken by the dimensions of the Lamma Island Power Station, which feeds all Hong Kong. The impressive contrast between the indus-trial grayscale of the plant and the blue of the sea brought about a convulsion of ideas: the sea as a creative force, the waves pushing life onto the sand and land, shap-ing another step in evolution, loneliness, migration, adrift debris, man-made power

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and the powerless, nature and artifice. An image emerged, and grew towards a meta-performatic scene: a QR-Code floating in the sea. At the beach, they created and hand-painted a QR-Code on a cardboard box. Once scanned through a smartphone camera, the code would lead to a web-hosted video of a boxed QR-Code actual-ly floating in the sea. This would be the outset. A brand new organic-data entity would grow, evolve, travel, relate, connect, discover, in a constant mirror-play be-tween reality and virtuality.

DEMO had created the Cardboard box-man in Guimarães and the artists decided to upgrade it in Hong Kong. Like them, a stranger in a strange land, he longed to communicate and bond. They created and build the dummy on the street. A blank cardboard box accurately branded “made in China” with human-like legs, the Card-board box-man was born on the street and sat motionless outside Experimenta Gallery. The gallery was supposed to have been their working place, exhibition ve-nue, and living quarters for these weeks, but it was closed without further expla-nation of the owner/curator who invited them and the project. The Cardboard box-man was therefore homeless, helpless and disenfranchised. He was reclaiming the street as both his home and artistic place of existence. A closed box outside a closed

box, as if it had been denied access to an exclusive, and delusive, art world.

But as one door closes, another one opens in invitation. The Jockey Club for Creative Arts wanted to meet these Portuguese art-ists and their Cardboard box-man. In that place, against a white-washed wall of what was the exhibition space of an art gallery, he finally gets an identity: a QR-code in the box. The code, hand-painted, would be his interface with this new world: once scanned, the code would take the viewer to the box-man’s Facebook profile.

Alone, isolated, quiet and still, sitting on the street sidewalk, the only interaction available was using the code: the passer-by would have to use his or her smartphone, pointing it to this man-box, in order to access more information and, eventually, start a friendship. The code was at once a face, a language, a name, a past. The reality and virtuality of these human dimensions - including the city, the street and all their personal and social meanings - are medi-ated, or rather, negotiated, through physi-cal and virtual objects in the public space.

A highly populated residential complex, Chunking Mansions is one of Hong Kong hubs for people from all over the world, offering a Babel of languages, colours, smells, products, services and sound. It also

provided the cheapest accommodation in the city. It was home. Each building is 17 stories tall and the small elevators are tire-lessly crowded. Caught on camera, Card-board box-man is captured alone inside a tiny box inside a box of myriad boxes. The Babel world stops to observe his double through the CCTV screen on the ground floor. The hardness of concrete and steel and the brightness of a clean LCD screen clash with the softness of a paper skin. Virtuality seems to deny physicality.

As they wanted to understand the ways through which Chinese people relate to technology, information and communica-tion, they headed to the Golden Shop-ping Center, a tight concentration of elec-tronic stores, shops and stands. Someone there would decode him. But the Card-board box-man kept to side alleys, a place in which he felt he belonged. The busy streets had no room for human contact.

The next day - the “Day of the Dead” in Portugal - the dummy was replaced by a performer, and the Cardboard box-man took the cable car to the Nian Tan Big Buddha in Lantau Island. The biggest statue of a sitting Buddha in the world, it is a landmark devoted to spirituality and demanding introspection. In Buddhism, death is not the end of life, and the spirit goes on in other forms and spaces. Death

leads to rebirth and the spirit is always learning from the different bodies it in-habits.

Back in central Hong Kong, the box-man had dinner from a street vendor and went to a jam-session where he was given a hu-man voice and got to share HK’s social nightlife. His identity journey from blank industrial by-product to human expres-sion was complete. He went on to be re-used, recycled or yet again re-purposed.

On Saturday, DEMO presented the doc-umentary Uwaga!, one of the outcomes of the Guimarães project and the prequel to Hong Kong’s Code. The screening at the ACO Art and Cultures Outreach, fol-lowed by a short discussion, intended to open future collaborations between Por-tuguese and Chinese artists and institu-tions.

Sunday was to be a long day full of mean-ingful contrasts. The artists’ research on art in the urban public space led them to what they can only describe as “The Philippina Sundays”, an amalgamated time-space taken by hundreds, maybe thousands, of Phillipina immigrant women in their only day off. Lacking private quarters in the Chinese houses where they work, they reclaim Hong Kong public spaces so they can meet, socialize or just relax, – bank

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lobbies, upmarket brand stores – turn-ing them into communal makeshift liv-ing rooms. Using cardboard boxes, every sunday they take over over the corporation marble and improvise an ephemeral fami-liarity. They build their own dwellings and inhabit the public space as a community.

In the heart of Hong Kong the artists found the synthesis, or rather the accu-mulation, of what they were looking for: other uses and meanings of the ubiquitous cardboard box, the blurring of boundaries between public and private, and local com-munities finding other modes of artistic expression in an overpopulated city. A week before, they had met PBBI, a group of Philippine women who had found in drama and dance a way to expose social is-sues such as sexual harassment by Chinese employers, or poverty or alcohol abuse in their home country. Their stage is the street, and designer/performer Gil Mac created and built, in situ, out of cardboard boxes, their public identity as a perfor-mance group.

On a different approach to public space and media they met Kenny Wong, a young and rising media artist working, at the time, with drone technology. The state-of-the-art surveillance apparatus is appropri-ated by Wong as a vehicle for visual ex-perimentation. To these Portuguese artists, this fortunate meeting and fruitful col-

laboration with the award-winning artist also led a reflexion on the extreme ends of modern China. From the cardboard-cov-ered floors to sky-high corporation perva-siveness, Hong Kong, and all modernity, one might say, stands on the threshold of unbalanced powers, between the powerful abstract forces of capital and state and the human lives catering to the everyday needs of these powers.

Sunday is the only happy day to these Philippine women. In the public space, they can call their families, speak their language, eat and share their native food. Distance, loneliness, poverty, sacrifice, and longing become a bit lighter by these cardboard almost-houses so far away from home.

Home is where the heart is was DEMO’s fi-nal work in the streets of Hong Kong. It merges the contrasting ideas of space and place. In Portugal, in Hong Kong, or in the Philippines. A place is at once physi-cal and symbolic, it holds layers and layers of meaning. It is not static, unchangeable. A place is something you build with your memories, your experience, your laughter, your hardships, your expression. A place is something one builds by inhabiting it, liv-ing it in many multiple ways. A place is something you take along with you and share with strangers and friends. No mat-ter where it is. No matter who it belongs to.

8 POWER STATION

14 THE CARDBOARD BOX MAN

40PBBI

44KENNY WONG

48HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS

CODE INDICE

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POWER STATION LAMMA ISLAND

Lamma Island, New TerritoriesMonday 28/10/2013

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THE CARDBOARD BOX MAN EXPERIMENTA

Hollywood Road, Hong Kong IslandTuesday 29/10/2013

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THE CARDBOARD BOX MAN JOCKEY CLUB CREATIVE ARTS CENTER

Shek Kip Mei , New KowloonWednesday 30/10/2013

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THE CARDBOARD BOX MAN CHUNGKING MANSIONS

Tsim Sha Tsui, KowloonWednesday 30/10/2013

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THE CARDBOARD BOX MAN GOLDEN SHOPPING CENTER

Sham Shui Po, KowloonThursday 31/10/2013

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THE CARDBOARD BOX MAN BIG BUDDHA

Lantau Island, New TerritoriesFriday 01/11/2013

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THE CARDBOARD BOX MAN BIG BUDDHA

Lantau Island, New TerritoriesFriday 01/11/2013

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THE CARDBOARD BOX MAN HK BY NIGHT

Central, Hong Kong IslandFriday 01/11/2013

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PBBI HONG KONG

Central, Hong Kong IslandSunday 03/11/2013

PBBI

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PBBI HONG KONG


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KENNY WONG DRONE


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KENNY WONG DRONE


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HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS HSBC


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HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS CENTRAL


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HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS IFC


HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS

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GIL MAC

Gil MAC (b.1975, Coimbra, Portugal) is a performer, musician, graphic designer and “brainchild” of the Errorist Collec-tive. Graduated in graphic arts by the Art School of Coimbra (ARCA-1999), he studied photography at the Maumaus School in Lisbon (1998), and multimedia at the Caldas da Rainha Art and Design School (ESAD-2003). At the same school he had additional training in typography and poster design. His work was integrated in several colective exhibitions and publica-tions, highlighting: “Selfportrait” at Mau-maus (photography, 1998), “This statement is false” at the Altes Finanzant Gallery, Berlin (poster design, 2010), “Darknova” at Salão 40 (photography, 2010) and the “Cimento” (mixmedia, 2011). Since June 6, 2006, he has been signing his projects as WhateverTM, working as a graphic de-signer for music, fashion and theatre pro-jects/events. Whatever TM is also involved in several other projects in urban interven-tion, media and pop culture. He was a member of CITAC (Coimbra) from 2006 to 2011. As a musician (singer, DJ and Mc) Gil Mac has been in many projects since the early 90s and created soundtracks for theatre performances such as Estado de Excepção (2007), Retalhos (Teatro do

Frio, 2008) and Hypnos Club (2009). As actor/performer he has worked with Wo-jtek Ziemilsky, Pedro Penim, Carlos Curto, Catarina Lacerda, Rodrigo Malvar, Andrés Bezares and Patrick Murys, among others. He has participated in the Macao Fringe Theatre Festival with Teatro do Frio (2009). In 2011 he participated with DEMO as a performer/director in artistic research project Russian Roulette, at the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, Poland. He was performer in Câ-mara Escura by Projecto Buh! included in the Guimarães 2012-European Capital of Culture Programme. In Guimarães he also did the graphic design and the sound in-stallation in the exhibition Saber Fazer. In 2012, he was also co-director/performer in Limbo, a co-production DEMO & CIT-AC. He trained and directed the project UWAGA!, produced by DEMO, included in the Guimarães 2012 - European Capital of Culture programme Tempos Cruzados. In 2013, co-directed the show A Queda, a partir do Limbo, co-produced by Centro de Artes e Espectáculos da Figueira da Foz. He was performer in Estufas, by Circol-ando. He also co-directed and did graphic design for K A, included in the SET 2013 festival.

Margarida Cabral (b. 1981, Guimarães, Portugal), is a graduate by the University School of Arts of Coimbra (EUAC) and a performer and a sculptor. Member of CITAC since 2006, she has been develop-ing work in the performing arts and pro-duction. As a sculptor, she has participated in group exhibitions and did work in set, prop and costume design. She has worked as actress/performer with Wojtek Ziemil-sky, Pedro Penim, Carlos Curto, Ricardo Seiça, Andrés Bezares, Rodrigo Malvar and Patrick Murys. She co-staged the show Sim Não Talvez (2009) and did set design for Estado de Excepção (2007) and Sim Não Talvez (2009). She was producer for (Re)Ciclo de Teatro (2008) and Cycle Mechanics (2010) festivals. As co-founder and member of DEMO, in 2011 she was

performer/director in the artistic research project Russian Roulette, at the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, Poland. She was performer, ex-ecutive producer and costume designer for the Câmara Escura by Project Buh! includ-ed in the Guimarães 2012-European Cap-ital of Culture programme. She did stage management for Arraial by Circolando, at the art festival TODOS and Manobras do Porto. She was executive producer for the latter and assisted on the performative instalation Star Dust, by DEMO. In 2013, she co-directed and performed in A Queda, a partir do Limbo, co-produced by Centro de Artes e Espectáculos da Figueira da Foz. She was co-director, performer, prop-maker and costume designer in the show Nebulosa by DEMO.

MARGARIDA CABRAL

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Crowdfunders: Ana Vaz Fernandes, Afonso Macedo, António Gil Carvalho, António Rebo-cho, Cheila Pereira, CITAC (Círculo de Iniciação Teatral da Academia de Co-imbra), Cláudia Lucas, Carolina Santos, Carmita, Cristina Cabral, Don, Filipa Cabrita, Flávio Cruz, Hedonic2, Inês Alves, Irina Sales Grade, Joana Bem-Haja, Joana Rangel, João Costa Gon-çalves, João de Almeida, José Manuel Silva, José Macedo, Jucélio Jr., Liliana Abreu, Marco Graça, Margarida Sarai-va, Mimi Cave, Nuno Carvalho, Olga Cabral, Paula-Rita, Pedro Carvalho, Rui Macedo, San-Chan, Sofia Soares, Su-sana Alves, Vânia Colaço.

DEMO would also like to thank: Ana Moraes, António Lourenço (Float-ing Machine), Cláudia Pinto, Cláu-dio Vidal, Carlos Vilar, João Menezes, João MT, João Paiva, José Macedo, Kit Chung, Marzena Marciniszyn, Nuno Viegas, Luciano Ho, Sebastião Vilela, Sérgio Rolo, Xue Tan.

Useful links:http://www.code.demo.pt/http://demo.pt/https://www.facebook.com/Babel.non-profithttp://www.kennywong.co/https://www.facebook.com/aco.bookshttp://www.jccac.org.hk/http://www.massivemov.com/codehttp://www.russianroulette.demo.pthttp://www.csw.art.pl/ http://uwaga2012.tumblr.com/

All images in this booklet are stills of a video documentary soon to be released.

All the featured QR-Codes are active and ready to be scanned by your smart-phone.

Decoding text by Claudia Pinto.

Code is a project by DEMO co-produced by Babel.

DEMO

http://www.code.demo.pt/

http://demo.pt/

https://www.facebook.com/Babel.nonprofit

https://www.facebook.com/Babel.nonprofit

http://www.kennywong.co/

http://www.kennywong.co/

http://www.jccac.org.hk/

http://www.massivemov.com/code

http://www.jccac.org.hk/

http://www.csw.art.pl/

http://www.csw.art.pl/

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Documents

CODE Hong Kong