Emergent Visions Provocation #1: Hong Kong Dialogue
“Emergent Visions Provocation #1: Hong Kong Dialogue” is the first in a series of roundtable discussions on urban screens and public media art inspired by Ellen Pau’s site-specific moving image artwork created for the M+ Facade – “The Shape of Light.” We look forward to having you join us for this dialogue with media artist Ellen Pau, curator Silke Schmickl and scholar/critic Chris Berry.
The event is free, but registration is required. The virtual event will take place during the following time zones: 6 a.m. Phoenix (MST)/8 a.m. Indiana (EST)/1 p.m. London (GMT)/9 p.m. Hong Kong (HKT).
Register for the eventEmergent Visions dialogues are made possible by the support of Nanyang Technological University, The Media School at Indiana University, and Indiana University’s College Arts & Humanities Institute.
More information about the event and its presenters:
Co-commissioned by M+ Museum and Hong Kong Art Basel, and supported by the fair’s Lead Partner UBS, “The Shape of Light” is a site-specific moving image artwork created for the M+ Facade. The massive urban screen of the M+ Museum of contemporary visual culture in the West Kowloon Cultural District radiates out over Victoria Harbor and the Hong Kong skyline. Using digitally animated special effects, the video explores the possibilities of the immaterial and the material, transforming light into digital objects. Featuring a popular sutra in Mahayana Buddhism, “The Heart Sutra,” here expressed through sign language, the ritualistic video meditates on the concept “form is emptiness, emptiness is form.”
Media artist Ellen Pau, curator Silke Schmickl, and scholar/critic Chris Berry are invited to collectively engage with the situations and expressions surrounding “The Shape of Light” and the M+ Facade. In Pau’s rendering and words, the M+ Facade is a futuristic lighthouse “standing on the shores of West Kowloon like a guardian that shines a light to all travelers and homecomers.” The video is offered as a gesture of guidance and hope for audiences in Hong Kong as “clusters of cells and pixels merge with the building’s architecture, forming a new cultural observatory to the place artists call home.” As “The Shape of Light” displays a deep understanding of the image and the materiality of its screen façade, how might it also be a provocation for reflecting on the possibilities, problems, and histories of urban screens and public media art for Hong Kong and beyond?
Ellen Pau was born and raised in Hong Kong, and is a leading figure of the city’s media art scene whose works have been exhibited locally and internationally since the 1980s. Pau is known for exploring the intersection of visual-art languages with the latest technologies. She takes inspiration from new media to examine ever-evolving notions of self and the changing times in which we live.
Silke Schmickl is the Lead Curator, Moving Image at M+ Museum, Hong Kong. She was previously curator at the National Gallery Singapore, the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, a researcher at the German Art History Center in Paris and the co-founding director of Lowave, a Paris/Singapore based curatorial platform and publishing house for artists’ moving images. She has initiated and directed numerous art and film projects engaging with the contemporary art scenes in Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
Chris Berry is Professor of Film Studies at King’s College London. He works on screen-based media in the Sinosphere, and has researched public screens and everyday life in Shanghai, Cairo, and London.
View the full video documentation for “The Shape of Light”