“Microwave International New Media Arts Festival (Microwave) was in its 21st year in 2017, the theme being “Cyberia.” Festival programs included exhibition, symposium and talks, video showcase and screenings. Microwave was established in 1996 by “Videotage.” Over two decades it gradually establishes itself as the presentation platform of experimental new media art. Ellen Pau, one of the founders, said in 2016 that Microwave positioned itself as suitable for people of all ages with the objective of popularizing the public’s knowledge in new media arts. Yet, after two decades, she believed “the depth of the Festival’s content needs to be deepened.”
The main exhibition of 2017 iteration took place at Exhibition Gallery of Hong Kong City Hall between October 10 and 22. Exhibits included Perfumery Organ by TASKO Inc., NARROW V.2 by NONOTAK Studio, DzDz by Yao Chunghan, Daily Sketches by Zach Lieberman, and Electrostatic Bell Choir by Darsha Hewitt. By the beginning of October, Microwave’s press effort began in newspapers, online news portals and cultural magazines. While the content was about curatorial approach, information of participating artists and their works, some of the descriptions and vocabularies used in the coverage were reminiscent of those in popular consumer events, for example “officially kaisui” (meaning “opens” in Japanese, deployment of its Kanji in Chinese press is an implication of fashionable events) “recommendation for the weekend,” etc. In the meantime, more stories and posts were uploaded to trend-watch, hobbies, popular culture and commercial online platforms, content of which focused on visiting the exhibition as entertainment and put emphasis on the visual impact of the exhibits. Some described the visits as “punching-in” (meaning people flocked to popular events to take selfies so they could boast about it) and call the visitors “real/ make-shift literary youth.” Some of the stories and posts were in turn shared on Microwave facebook.
On October 20, crowds began to appear at the exhibition venue. On the 21st, the organizer put in place crowd-control procedures. The number of visitors was even higher on the 22nd. Visitors had to line up for forty-five minutes to gain access. Two hours before the end of the exhibition, the organizer rejects new-comers to join the queue. Over 9000 man-time visitors were recorded during the ten-day exhibition. Followers of Microwave facebook increased by 30%. Joel Kwong, Program Director of Microwave told the press that she could sympathize with the crowd flocking to “punch-in” and photography would not be forbidden inside the exhibition hall. She also said that the curatorial team would learn from experience and dedicate itself to arts promotion and education.”

“2017 is the year that marked the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong’s Handover to China. A series of related activities took place, government- or community-led. The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) established an inter-departmental Steering Committee (with Chief Secretary for Administration Cheung Kin-chung Matthew as the president) at the end of 2016 to plan the 20th anniversary celebrating events. They earmarked $640 million to be spent on a series of local and overseas celebratory activities organized by the Home Affairs Bureau, Development Bureau, Leisure and Cultural Services Department, Information Services Department, and Planning Department. The Mainland also played an active role and provided resources to facilitate the organization of the activities, for example, by lending out artifacts. Art associations and interest groups at the community level organized various visual arts exhibitions in the name of “Celebrating Handover Anniversary.” In addition, Chinese-funded media groups, culture companies, overseas Chinese associations and business associations put together similar visual arts events.
On the other hand, independent art practitioners and groups ran activities to reflect on, or even protested against, the Handover Anniversary, resulting in a scene distinctly different from that of the government and the pro-China associations. There was a wide disparity in scale and resources between the two camps without any overlap in regard to the participating artists and publicity channels used. Official and pro-China organizations adopted a narrative entirely different from that of the independent arts groups. The former put forward the ideas of “promoting and perpetuating Chinese culture,” “expressing patriotic sentiments,” “restoring the spirit of Chinese civilization,” “developing a stronger sense of national identity,” “Chinese artists,” “a hub of cultural exchange,” “east meeting west,” “integrating traditional and modern beliefs,” “promoting Hong Kong cultural and creative industries,” “showcasing achievements,” “painting and calligraphy as essential components of Chinese culture,” “brushwork and skill,” and “combining traditional ink painting and contemporary art technique,” etc. The latter looked into “1997,” “identity,” “locality,” “dilemmas of the individual,” “artistic labor,” “art space,” “political censorship,” “political sensitivity,” “operation of arts groups,” “social movements,” and the “Hong Kong-China relationship,” etc.
The official and pro-China organizations planned a large number of activities, in general homogenously festive. In comparison, independent arts groups were more concerned about deconstructing historical events and offering critical reviews by deploying contemporary art forms (including performance art, installation, video, mixed media, etc.). In comparison to the visual arts activities for the celebration of the 10th Handover Anniversary, 2017 events were highly similar in nature and approach, both for the official and pro-China organizations. Their perceptions of Hong Kong’s cultural positioning and development of visual art remained basically unchanged, while the independent arts groups and artists continued their reflection on the issues concerning the handover at the political, social and cultural levels.”

Nigel Cameron, Hiram To, Wan Qingli and Alfonso Wong, four practitioners who had been closely related to the Hong Kong visual arts scene, passed away in 2017. The Yearbook has compiled concise biographies in memory of their achievement in the arts.

Professor Jao Tsung-i passed away in Hong Kong in 2018. Respected as the maestro of Chinese culture, Jao’s academic achievement has been widely recognized. Scholar aside, he was also a passionate painter and calligrapher who believed in what he called the “mutuality between art and learning.” This essay aims to conduct a general survey of the characteristics of his calligraphy and painting with special reference to archaism, which originates from his profound knowledge and scholarship. In Jao’s art there is always the presence of ancient masters and the tradition they expound but not without adaptation to suit the modern artist’s purposes. The writer proposes that Jao, by virtue of his scholarship, is a rare modern calligrapher and painter who embraces the traditional value of “archaism.”

The writer is one of the founders of Rooftop Institute. This essay starts by introducing the “Metis” concept by Professor Frank Vigneron when discussing art education: a cunning, prudent power of intelligence that makes ingenious responses and actions according to variable and non-predictable situations. The writer elaborates how Rooftop Institute adopts this concept in two art education projects – “Asia Seed” and “Hok Hok Zaap.” Spanning two years, Asia Seed invites Asian and local artists to lead students aged between fourteen and eighteen to workshops and overseas trips. The result of one of the cycles has been organized into an exhibition at Tai Kwun Contemporary, titled “Our Everyday – Our Borders.” Hok Hok Zaap is a learning collective comprising of fifteen Hong Kong artists and organizations. It aims to create a series of “learning materials” for art education carried out in the community. The writer points out that any large-scale attempt to develop a “generally applicable” art education model is bound to fail. The way to promote Metis is to put learners in a non-project situation. The keys to realize emancipation in education are decentralization, localization, and sufficient geographical mobility.

Historical research of calligraphy and its creative practice fall into different disciplines. In most cases, art historians do not double up as practising calligraphers. The writer, however, has been conducting art-historical researches and creating calligraphic works, with the purpose of trying to transgress the boundaries of the two areas. This essay aims to illustrate how art historical research could be integrated into personal creative theory, and subsequently practiced. Examples listed in this essay include couplets in oracle-bone, bronze and clerical scripts, alongside interdisciplinary creation such as calligraphy sculptures, big-character calligraphy performances and site-specific and improvisational works of calligraphy.

This essay combines discourse analysis and predictive processing theory, in an attempt to create a new theoretical methodology to solve the aforementioned problem. With this theory, the writer analyses the curatorial process of the “Hong Kong House” at the “Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale” in Japan. The writer argues that the curatorial approach of the Hong Kong House faces a conflict between the discourses of “art” and “community,” and its “art-oriented” instead of “community-oriented” inclination depletes its attempt to build an “exchange platform.”

Hong Kong culture flourishes in times of turmoil. The socio-cultural environment in which Hong Kong artists reside has a strong bearing on how they create. From the perspective of “sense of foreboding,” this essay highlights the difference between new generation artists and those from the 50s and 60s. The artworks of the former reveal a more complicated sense of foreboding and turns to a new cultural identity. The writer analyses Mak Hin-yeung Antonio’s artworks, complemented by those by other artists, to argue that Mak’s works made in the 80s and 90s not only embody his sense of foreboding but also transcends from there. Mak’s sculptures are visual images of Hong Kong’s cultural pride and life force.

This essay provides an overview of the development of political cartoons in Hong Kong before moving onto a focused analysis of the internet political cartoons that has gained its traction in the last decade. The four areas of analysis are: 1. Interaction between the cartoonists and the readers: the internet enables an “invisible covenant” between the cartoonist and followers, which both connects and restricts; 2. Cultural identity changes of the political cartoonists: while traditional political cartoons aim to comment and criticize, internet political cartoons aims to promote followers’ actions; 3. Breakthrough of formality and content: the design background shared by many of the internet political cartoonists have equipped them to explore new formats and language of communication. Charts and plotless panel organization are examples among others; 4. Depoliticization: new generation political cartoonists turn their attention from “hard politics” to daily life politics. This turn can be read as a reflection of the political reality of Hong Kong at this point of time.

This essay intents to look into the discussion of avant-garde art in several representative modernist art and literary publications in Hong Kong in the 1950s and 1960s. It focuses on how avant-garde art was accepted within the local framework of Hong Kong, and how local art and literary publications used avant-garde art to reflect on issues such as politics, tradition and modernity. The writer discovers that “avant-garde art” was understood as emerging, formally-experimental and abstract art schools such as Cubism, Expressionism, Surrealism and Abstract Art. When introducing western avant-garde artists, the majority of the critics used western art terminologies while, without exception, they used oriental aesthetic terminologies when discussing abstract art in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Such a difference could be attributed to the advocation by art and culture practitioners who encouraged abstract artists in the 50s and 60s to achieve oriental aesthetic values, such as “non-self,” “self/ego,” “rule of no rule as the supreme rule,” “take no action,” “beyond the real and unreal,” with western methods. By putting the publication of the discussed titles in the context of the society, the artists involved in introducing avant-garde art to Hong Kong had never regarded art as purely formalistic. Avant-garde to them was a tool for art and literature to respond to political reality and Chinese cultural re-engineering.