Cities of Desire - Hong Kong Arts Centre - Tuesday 15th September

After the excitement of the previous days typhoon, I decided to go and see an exhibition at the Hong Kong Arts Centre called Cities of Desire, recommended in the Time Out Hong Kong guide. Since I had not been to see any exhiibtions yet, I took my opportunity and walked all of 10 minutes to the Arts Centre situated right by the harbour so it has some beautiful views.

It was a really thought provoking exhibition which is why I was especially glad I went because it got you engaged with some of the curent issues facing Hong Kong today, namely the identity and character of the city itself and what and how it is developing in to. It seemed to take a pretty scathing view of the label Asia's world city, a label on many of the tourist sheets on Hong Kong, which seems to depict it as quite one dimensional, quite focused on finance and profit making, a view and an image contemporary Hong Kong Chinese seem to want to diffuse. The exhibitiom sought to show how how a balance should be struck between having its one sepaarate identity from China, whilst bering aware of its mulitplicty of ties which bind it to the mainland. It highlighted issues such as the destruction of cultural sites for city development, notably with the Queens Pier. Indeed, the extreme urbanisation of the city was clearly in view when I walked the so called Wan Chai Green trail. There were scarcely a handful of trees lining the this very steep but short hike along a concrete path up to towards the more verdent peak from Wan Chai. Ironically seeing the trees makes you realise how precious little is left of greenery or diversity of scenery remaining in the centre of Hong Kong.

However, on a more positive note, this exhibition showcased different people's ideas for development of the few remaining unused spaces in the city. They ranged from a zoo to green terracing! Moreover, it was fascinating to see how the public are starting to use their public spaces in new and unique ways in order to express themselves, using it to perform bizarre group acts or just travel repeatedly up and down the escalators making noises and sounds as they do so! It asked questions of the effect of public space of issues like the smoking ban, hypothesising whether the cigarette bins created to cater for it would open up new forums for cross industry communication, as office workers bonded during cigarette breaks.. It questioned the limits of how much public spaces can be used or 'hijacked' for ones own purposes, and was a fascinting insight in to Hong Kong today.

Conversely, it used Vienna to show how it had protected and elevated its cultural hertage at the expense of a much altered social set up due to mass migration faciliatated by the EU and how large swaths of migrant populations were being largerly ignored. In showing these two ways of ordering a city, it threw up the problems with both extremes and posed questions on how to move forward in the next decade facing such issues.

It was only a small exhibition but it was fascinating and I think extremely necessary to be aware of and to engage with the issues of the hour, since I am living here! I am going to try and come to more as and when I hear about them!