'THIS IS not a historical archive or a visual arts archive,' says Alvin Yip, curator of the Wan Chai Visual Archive. 'The closest thing I can think of is that it's like a Wan Chai Facebook page.'
This is a unique way of looking at the aluminium-clad rooms that occupy the first floor of a large Wan Chai block of flats. The building is labelled for redevelopment, but is currently filled with the work of various community-focused exhibitions. According to Carl Gouw, property developer and director of the Wan Chai Visual Archive, there are a lot of unused buildings in Hong Kong. Commercial property developers regularly buy up buildings with the intention of building them in the future, but in the interim they remain empty.
This is the very state that he found the building which now houses the recently opened archive. His company, Goldig Investment Group, purchased the building and proposed to develop it into a boutique hotel within two to three years. But Gouw saw the opportunity to create a project that would not only give a purpose to the building, but enrich the cultural integrity of the community at large. He decided to join forces with Yip, who is also an assistant professor at Hong Kong Poly University's School of Design, and engage in community-focused art projects.
One such project, Urban Narratives, involved asking 35 postgraduate students from Moscow to create iPhone apps with Wan Chai as their point of origin. One app identified all the outdoor spots that one could best fly a kite, while another looked at the rhythms of the area and created a dance map app.
A second project, Mute Works, brought together members of the deaf community and attached LED lights to their hands; they were then asked to 'talk' about Wan Chai through sign language, resulting in beautiful images.
However, both Gouw and Yip agree that the purpose of the archive is not to create commercial or even visually impressive works. While they are engaging artists to participate and create works, there is a joint authorship with the community that negates traditional artistic values. The goal is the creative process itself and the involvement of the participants.
'I look at it as a recreation of the family room in anyone's home, but for the community,' says Yip. 'A recreation of the room where you store your memories, so each workshop is about the moment that we engage the community. That is the most important part.'