|
There is no measure of weight until it is lifted.
Burdening Representations – historical memory of China from Hong Kong (thereafter Burdening Representations) is derived from the specific need to affirm the relevance of the June 4th massacre in Beijing in 1989 to contemporary life in Hong Kong and to continue to name the violence that has since evolved into many forms.
In a more general way, Burdening Representations is derived from the need to acknowledge the weight of historical facts by remembering, to keep this as a burden by choice, and to keep the burden from sinking into inertia. It is derived from the need to affirm life.
20th anniversary of the June 4th massacre in Beijing, 1989, is a grave matter that continues to exert weight on many – emotional, intellectual, political, ethical. Burdening Representations is the response of eleven photographers who, like many others, still care. On top of the burden of proof that many of them took upon themselves as documentary photographers in 1989, they have since extended the burden into the realm of truth - as makers of images, they find truth manifested not only as evidence, but also in stories and memories, intimacy and friendship.
Burdening Representations is as much s a collection of works about China and Hong Kong as a collection of ways of seeing China. Consider the timing of this exhibition in relation not just to 1989, but also to the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, celebrations compulsory. “China” is a proper name turned into a sign that carries gigantic histories and gigantic emotions, muting other histories and other emotions with its agility and eloquence.
Burdening Representations is a title indebted to photography historian John Tagg’s book, The Burden of Representation, which warrants another essay to discuss and debate. For the purpose of this writing here, I would like to register the relevance of his theory in understanding this exhibition – a specific way of presenting visual images that addresses the public as a set of ideas, the public culture of remembering and forgetting, and photography as a set of material practices, participating in producing meanings of China, hence participating in a certain cultural politics of representations of China. Burdening Representations marks how “China” comes into visuality – the apparatuses of producing and distributing images, of storing and transmitting images, making nationhood visible, to name a few examples. It is an intervention into the pretence of well-being that continues to organize our everyday life.
The exhibition is presented in three different venues. I have roughly arranged works that present everyday realities in Lumenvisum’s gallery. The next venue (L2-13) presents portraits, some anonymous, some significant others for the photographers. In the largest gallery (L3) are works that are more abstract, that take issue with China as an object of representation, at times embodied by the photographic moment, at times estranged. They also take issue with “China” as sign. The arrangement is not intended to be a categorization of types. Nor are these divisions mutually exclusive. Instead, they are telling of the way photographs may work with and against space.
The Chinese title of the exhibition is quite different from the English. A transliteration could be “Performing Impedance”. I chose this name to address the firm resistance in the photographic works against a power that is both oppressive from one centre and distributed. The name also addresses the power the photographic works also practice in challenging the former.
Some of the works are made originally for this exhibition. Many have never been exhibited before. Some were taken in 1989, others in 2009, and many in between. Specifically, Tse Mingchong’s works concern themselves with visuality as spatial relation between the camera and the object of representation; Alfred Ko’s works deal with sarcasm and parody; Vincent Yu’s works play with absurdity; Leon Suen works with the visual and cultural sign of “red”; Sin Wai Keung’s works participates in producing hysteria and wilderness; Bobby Yip’s works articulate the making of cultural identity; Raymond Chan’s works register boundaries inside out; Cheng Yat Yue’s works are committed to light and its many shades; Wong Kantai’s works reveal the dehumanizing force of state apparatuses; Karl Chiu’s works challenge our complacency in looking; Chan Muk Nam’s works affirm the photographic moment as one of intimacy. Each photographer takes issue with the 20th anniversary of June 4th, 1989 and China in different ways, but share a common concern for democratic and social change in China.
The yearning for freedom comes with youth as much as with age. With familiarity with life comes a steadiness and steadfastness of practice.
Profoundly privileged I am to present to you the photographers.
Yeung Yang
Curator
Club 71, formerly Club 64,
May 2009 |
