Here’s one Hong Kong art show that would have been ideal handover anniversary highlight

The works are relevant to the discussion topics but none makes overt comments. As Yim Sui-fong says, her performances and videos about identity are open to different interpretations because they are meant to encourage reflections, rather than to describe her own views. Tsang Tak-ping, a co-founder of Para Site who has become a Buddhist and a farmer in recent years, goes even further in removing traces of the artist’s intent. His Six Scenarios of Mindful Practice: Ego-centric Suffering, Severe Attachment (2017) is an installation of random objects that he put together while he looked back on his life. “There is no need to try to look for anything representational”, he says.

Law Yuk-mui’s Project 123, has been created by the voice of a factory worker left accidentally on a set of electronic recorders that she bought online.

1a space, Unit 14, Cattle Depot Artist Village, 63 Ma Tau Kok Road, To Kwa Wan, Kowloon, 11am-7pm, Tue-Sat. Until July 30.

31 June 1997, Videotage

The recently retired art history professor addresses a host of issues, such as post-truth politics and Hong Kong’s identity, through his work. This includes the recording of 50 interviews with unnamed members of the public in which he asked them to recall what they did on June 31, 1997. Some fell for the ruse and told him what they did on the last day before the handover – which was actually June 30, 1997. Others realised it was a day that did not exist, but played along and imagined what could have happened.

The project’s collaborator, Oscar Ho Hing-kei answered the question with a series of eight drawings. In between rainstorms and being kept up by nightmares on June 30 and July 1, the artist imagined an idealised 24 hours inspired by memories of the Occupy movement. Locals became uncharacteristically courteous and caring, volunteers helped students with their homework in the middle of the city, and artists and performers entertained the masses on the street.

Writer Xu Xi has also contributed a short story called The Transubstantiation of the Ants for the occasion.

Videotage, Unit 13, Cattle Depot Artist Village, 63 Ma Tau Kok Road, Kowloon, Mon-Sat, 12-7pm. Until July 30.

Reload_HK, Videotage

Organised by Videotage, the “Reload_HK” video shorts screening and interactive exhibition is a treat for the eyes. This third handover-themed exhibition at Cattle Depot is a loose survey of both old and new works about Hong Kong.

The meticulous video game landscape in Ip Yuk-yiu’s Another Day of Depression in Kowloon (2012) is all the more evocative as the incessant rain in the video parallels the weather the city experienced on July 1, 1997 and the weeks before July 1, 2017.

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Z+, Unit 15, Cattle Depot Artist Village, 63 Ma Tau Kok Road, Kowloon, Thur-Sun, 1-7pm. Until July 29.

Composing Stories with Fragments of Time, Karin Weber Gallery

Eight local artists were shown a letter from a Hong Kong emigrant to Australia in 1997 and asked to respond with a new work.

Luke Ching Chin-wai’s Imagine There’s No Countries, Imagine There’s No Heaven (2017) is a collection of envelopes where, in place of the stamp, a sunken well holds a flip book made up of used stamps from the colonial years. There is also one made of stamps showing the flags of all the United Nations member states. As you flip through, the flags look as if they are all being lowered.

Annie Wan Lai-kuen’s (Lost) Art of Writing Letters/Hand-copy of Excerpts from Zhi Tingguangshu by Tang Junyi (2017) is made up of three porcelain panels with lines taken from letters written by the Chinese philosopher. Wan had posted the panels to the gallery and one was smashed on the way there, a foreseeable outcome that she said mirrored the fragility of letter writing.

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Angela Su’s Caspiar (2017) is a video based on the late American comic Andy Kaufman’s story of an island that sank in the middle of the Caspian Sea. In her tale, a former Caspiar resident made his way to North Point, in Hong Kong, and became a domestic worker.

The exhibition also includes works by Kurt Chan, Francis Yu, Lau Chi Chung, Carmen Ng and Elva Lai. It is fascinating to see how the artists all went off on different tangents, such as Hong Kong history, the concept of home, and comfort food.

Karin Weber Gallery, G/F, 20 Aberdeen Street, Central, 11am-7pm, Tue-Sat. Until Aug 12.