Four artists explore relationship of Hong Kong people with their city through play, and looking at how their memories are stored
- Four artists are using play to explore the dramatic changes seen in Hong Kong over the past two years
- Visitors to their workshops can take to the streets to push a square wheel, collect tiny objects of interest or play a musical toy
A group of artists have come up with a creative way to reset Hongkongers’ relationship with their city after two years of dramatic change: by taking to the streets, and play.
From this weekend, you can attend workshops and talk to the team of four behind a temporary makerspace called the Play 4 Laboratory inside the Goethe-Institut in Wan Chai, part of the German cultural centre’s two-month “The Body and The City” programme that also includes screenings of films about cities around the world.
Gum Cheng, one half of the artist duo C&G, has lined up a dozen or so handmade devices that resemble a measuring wheel. Instead of a wheel, a square wooden block is fixed to a rotating axis and participants are asked to “wheel” it along the street until the hard edges are worn down and the square turns into a round(ish) disc.
Cheng has taken an ancient Chinese aphorism and run with it. “The laws of heaven are circular, those of the earth, square” is a saying from ancient philosophers observing the rigidity and limitations of human thinking. For those in Hong Kong who manage to grind the wooden block down to a circle, Cheng promises an ultimate revelation: the true essence of Lo Ting, the man-fish creatures who were supposed to be the city’s original inhabitants.
Spiritual enlightenment was far from my mind as I pushed the unwieldy implement down Hennessy Road, my eyes trained on the textures of different sections of the pavement, watching out for rougher, more effective surfaces for sanding down the wood.