Two exhibitions on our city’s value of time
Pink, white and purple, fabric and plastic; brown, black and grey, wood and metal. A light-hearted and imaginative exhibition about play, an intense and solemn exhibition about sojourning migrants. The two exhibitions look and feel different, yet their differences may only be skin deep. This is a parallel reading of the two Sparkle! exhibitions currently on at Oi! Street, A good waste of time, and Counting the days. In the discussion below, I will briefly contrast the visitor’s experience, then begin to discuss their themes and contexts.
The Exhibitions
A good waste of time
Time is fun and is designed to be inviting. Curator Solomon Yu explains that the exhibition subverts the idea that play is merely a waste of time, and instead
…stimulates [our] curiosity, imagination and creativity. It can even benefit one’s well-being and interpersonal relationships. The process of fun has the potential to disarm, yet its challenging aspect also calls for one’s focus and attention. It can go even further by testing one’s willing to take risks…it is our ardent hope to bring new discoveries during this journey of play
Scientists ranging from mammalian and human behaviour to children development have long convincingly argued and demonstrated the survival importance of play as a way to relax, to develop and test one’s skill, and to mediate social connections. Several contradictions within the concept of play, i.e. challenge and relaxation, safety and risk, can be found within various works playing off each other. Perhaps due to the habit that art is to be individually contemplated, the social connection aspect of play is not apparent.
Yet the visitor must make use of the artwork to experience them. Fun is like beauty and pleasure, disinterested or otherwise: words can never fully explain it. Funness will not occur, hence the exhibition incomplete, unless the visitor makes use of it.
For the readers who have visited Time, what do you think? Was it fun? Was it a (good) waste of time? Is Koko Ko’s water pipe simply a waste of time and materials, or is she experimenting with material integrity? The same question can be asked of Rogerger Ng’s set up of rubber gloves.
What is play? Recently, speaking to my 1.5 year-old, I realized that she has no idea that my word, ‘play’, refers to her manipulations and explorations. Stacking blocks was a serious matter. I have imposed my judgment on her activities, just as how the public often judge young protestors and legislative candidates to be playing around.
Is play useful or frivolous? Is it better that it be useful or frivolous? Play is an enigmatic concept.
Counting the days
What are the nth shades of grey between the wealthy immigrant family and the war-torn family? Is leaving home ever easy?
The quadrilingual captions and texts stood out immediately: the curatorial team took an effort to make this exhibition access to those ethnic groups portrayed in the exhibition. There is a sense of formality in having all exhibition texts properly translated in the way that multilingual governments are obliged to do.
This exhibition is literally a literary trail. Though it is rewarding to follow the texts, it does take an above average motivation to begin and complete the journey. The contrast of lighting, the threads of (mostly) written stories and the somber sets of wood and metal are backdrops of a journey that delves into the struggles and injustice in our city. The method of breaking up the personal stories of the migrants and have them advance in parallel through the exhibition overcomes the common pitfall of neatly compartmentalizing migrant ‘types’ in different spaces of the venue. The overall effect is that as I progressed through the exhibition, I realized that I was only encountering one life among countless others, with no resolution in sight.
The exhibition is dreadful, but necessary. Hope exists, but it is sparse.
The ‘beauty’ of the exhibitions
Trying to judge the two exhibitions purely by visual arts standards misses the point. The beauty of Time is its playfulness, and Days its brutal realism. I use the term beauty unapologetically because both exhibitions evoked an unspeakable awe in me in their respective ways. I was at a lost to describe the fun and the dread.
Thoughts over afternoon tea
On the way home, the contrasting experiences of the two exhibitions began to stir in my mind, there was some kind of connection between them. For me, Time was certainly fun and engaging, but it was Day that drew me emotionally into the world of a mainlander who came to Hong Kong in order to raise her child, and of the Filipino maid whose goal is to return home financially secure. For the next few days, I mulled over the unspoken connections until an inspiration came one evening: who gets to play?
Who are the exhibitions about?
Time is not about the artists, but the visitors who actually play in the exhibition. It seems to be generally suitable for older youths and above, but several of the works speak more intimately to some; for example, Thomas Yuen’s Gonna Salvage You Each Time to videogamers, Rogerger Ng’s Physical Limit and Koko Ko’s My Playground possibly to people handy with tools around the home (i.e. the stereotypical renovation men and housewives). For the curator, everyone should reevaluate their attitude towards play.
With an overt respect and concern for the migrants, Day seeks to impress those with similar concerns and possibly convert others. It begins with a relatively non-proselytizing tone and presents the political realities naturally within the narratives. The message is for anyone who would listen, and the participation that crafted the message involved only the facilitating artists and the migrants.
Different people with similar concerns
Passage of Time
A good waste of time and Counting the days both deal with how people perceive the passage of time.
Time challenges dominant ideas of time-well-spent. The exhibition requires its visitors to focus on the here and now, to get their hands dirty and immerse in the task at hand. It believes that it is fun and worthwhile. It is also a state of being that the exhibition proposes should occur more often in the visitors’ daily lives.
Days presents the individual lives of people who are counting the days until something else better happens. ‘Now’ is a necessary process, its value is to be transpired until ‘that’ time arrives.
From vastly different beginnings and sporting a wildly different outlook, both exhibitions are concerned with people who are locked in a mindset and societal structure where ‘time’ holds more anxieties than treasures.
Injustice and absurdities of our societies
The injustice and absurdities of our societies stand forefront in Counting the days. Undesired (sometimes forced) migration is a systemic problem connected to education, labour and etc. at local and international levels in a seemingly unbreakable cycle.
But A good waste of time equally deals with the injustice and absurdities in our society. Isn’t it absurd that somehow our society is structured around a never-fulfilled cycle of working-for-money-to-play? And that we all seem to be submitting to it? In this strive to play-more-work-less, city life have been structured by the powerful to enable them to play more at the expense of others’ play time. As a result, many (the majority) count the days until the time they can play, have a place to play, meet their playmate, have the permission to play, and have the vitality to play. A good waste of time is a subtly subversive exhibition that uses play to expose the politics of play. Its play of kitchen and hardware materials is a celebration of the spirit to play anywhere with anything.
Counting the days is not without its playful moments. The participatory works, the comic strips and the video clearly bare marks of playfulness: creativity, focus, inspiration, skill, social connection, and dare I say, joy. In this sense, the engagement in preparation for the artworks was the actualization of justice. The impact is both actual and symbolic.
Can art change things?
How are things changed? If we can begin to form an answer, then we can begin to see what these two exhibitions can achieve. Of course, we could be skeptics and say that ‘playing at an exhibition hardly compels a person to reevaluate their view of play, or ‘playful participatory process simply placate a deeper need for radical changes’. However, these two exhibitions are not about jaded by-standers giving social commentaries, but about people getting together to chat and play in anticipation of something better ahead.
