It was an unexpectedly warm day as Syren Johnstone stood, in shirt-sleeves and a bit of sweat on his brow, over a hole dug in the West Kowloon Reclamation site. He held a shovel in his right hand and stared down at a rusted reinforcing bar poking out of the earth.
'This is reclaimed land, but we're still making archaeological finds here,' said Johnstone, who worked with two other architects, Kingsley Ng and Daniel Patzold, to create Excavation, a mock archaeological dig on the site of the Hong Kong-Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism. The biennale, which has attracted an eclectic range of installations and exhibits, is being held until the end of next month on a vacant part of the reclamation grounds, and covers about 73,000 square metres.
As the architects' work progressed, they found the remains of construction waste that had been mixed with the soil used to reclaim the land - a reminder, Johnstone said, that something can never come from nothing. He turned and looked at the craggy grass and gnarly trees dotting the site, and the half-dozen unused shipping containers housing some of the works. 'It's becoming a bit like Christiania here,' he said, referring to the infamous anarchist enclave in Copenhagen. 'People are just coming and doing all sorts of interesting things.'
Since it opened last month, the event has won plaudits for avoiding the academic stuffiness of many architecture showcases, first by situating itself outdoors but also by stressing public participation and the constantly evolving nature of art and architecture - concepts reflected in the theme, 'Bring Your Own Biennale'.
But that approach came as much from necessity as it did from curatorial vision. Pressed for time and strapped for cash, the curators had no choice but to stage a more rag-tag production than they would have otherwise. From the beginning, the biennale's curatorial team, led by the architect Marisa Yiu with partners Eric Schuldenfrei, Alan Lo and Frank Yu, had to work on a tight schedule and budget. They were awarded the curatorship in July, more than a year after the curators on the biennale's Shenzhen side had been chosen. The disarray behind Hong Kong's effort, some involved say, reflects the wider organisational problems holding back arts development in the city.
'This is something Hong Kong needs to realise if it wants to stage these kinds of events - they cannot be done in less than six months,' Schuldenfrei said. 'For a while we thought of calling it the Instant Biennale.'