A pivotal force in the development of art and community in Hong Kong since 2011, Asia Society Hong Kong Centre for Gok Dou Live will bring to you an engaging programme of talks featuring artists, curators, collectors, writers, publishers, critics and more to Art Central’s international audience.

Small Talks

Join us for this series of behind-the-scenes programs that will allow us to observe the conversations of some of Hong Kong’s finest artists, collectors and curators. Each session is designed to take a peek behind the curtain as the speakers connect, discuss, share thoughts and gather ideas without boundaries. Watch these conversations flow LIVE at the Art Central auditorium.

Session 1: Collector's Circle

A focused conversation with established and new collectors challenging our expectations on collecting to exhibiting. We meet with Jacobo Garcia Gil who hosts his collection in virtual reality, Yuri van der Leest a second generation collector to Queenie Rosita Law now running her own gallery space in Budapest and David Peereboom an artist and private collector. Listen in on their debate, as they share the differences, impacts and reasoning’s behind each realized decision and their pathways to success in the competitive world of collecting.

Session 2: Encountering Strangers 

An exploratory discussion on detachment and intimacy in our relationships with strangers by contemporary artists Lee Wing Ki Kalen, Yim Sui Fong and Lai Lon Hin. As their individual practices differ from archival photography, remapping objects and space, conceptual works to shifting realities virtual, imagined and real— find out how they make use of the creative process to destabilize expectations and provoke thoughts on the issues and the philosophies of relationships.  

Session 3: Spatial Traces 

We will uncover our erased spatial traces in this live talk between the fine-artists Ocean Leung, Lam Siu Wing and Law Yuk Mui. Together they will touch on our relations to history, urban planning, and city scapes — in their works which observe and intervene in the world of street drifting in Hong Kong —with hidden objects that echo stories of human nature.

Session 4: Innovating Expression 

A discussion between Hong Kong based curators Hilda Chan, Vennes Cheng, Yip Kai Chun and Orlean Lai on how to navigate the changing landscapes of curatorial expression. Fostering our own conversations they identify the new roles of curators in the 21st Century going beyond physical walls to a virtual world and seeking innovative ways to collaborate and empower audiences. Time to spark meaningful connections, revelations and unearth ourselves

Session 5: Independent Art Spaces

Art-journalist and reporter Aaina Bhargava takes us through Hong Kong’s changing independent art spaces in a panel discussion with industry-makers, Kay Beadman, Yang Jiang, Joseph Leung, and Eunice Tsang. China’s art hub isn’t just for the glamorous and famous, local artists and creatives are taking things into their own hands and setting up a market for experimentation outside the confines of commercial galleries and art fairs — find out more on the neighbourhoods, spaces and creators making their mark on the industry and how.

Arts Exchange

In a multi-part interview series, we provoke critical dialogue between contemporary, visual and fine-artists on their thoughts, personal experiences and practices. Watch as they share their personal stories in artistry and originality while addressing the impact of social, political and economic influences in a global context.

Session 1: A conversation with Wang Gongyiinterviewed by Jiao Tianlong [in Mandarin]

Session 2: A conversation with Xiaoze Xie interviewed by Michael Yong-Haron

Session 3: A conversation with Tayeba Begum Lipi interviewed by Saniza Othman

Session 4: An in-studio interview with Erez Nevi Pana

Session 5: A conversation with Vibha Galhotra interviewed by Georgina Maddox

HIGH RES Worlds  

In this virtual collaboration, five ground-breaking multi-media artists, Cao Shu, Winnie Yan, Cheng Hung Dony, Choi Sai Ho and Joseph Chen share with us their digital worlds— their works which document our changing perspectives on life, the internet and fictional journeys of discovery. This showcase will reconstruct their expansive creative bodies and careers, and examine how digital worlds can affect our perception of art. Uncover more in the world of visual, digital and computerised scenes. 

On show: 

1.    Joseph Chen, Sleeptripping Dualogy, 2018-2019 

Sleeptripping Dualogy is a series of two docu-fictional travelogues, Chungking Detour and Siam Rehab. These two pieces are born from artist Joseph Chen’s tours and dreams during a trip to Thailand and to Chongqing, a Chinese municipality which is the largest urban area in the world. In the travelogues, the artist finds himself occupying different realities, through the spiritual and mental state of a tourist and a dreamer. 

2.    Winnie Yan, Localized Blindness, 2019 

Constructed in the form of an eye test/observational diagnosis, Localized Blindness is a semi-autobiographical video that documents several internal monologues: What is left after the passing of an individual? It's between me - an individual who witnessed consecutive passings; another me - an observational being who observed the changes of my accompany and the surrounding; and the other voices, all that echo the distance between the subject and the outsider.  

3.    Cheng Hung Dony, Sunset as a Place, 2020 

This perfectly calm place that I am searching, does it exist?

4.    Choi Sai Ho, Black Moon, 2019 

2019 is the 50th anniversary of human beings landing on the moon, these visuals re-imagine the moon in another perspective with the help of computer animation, and express the moon in a dynamic way. The visuals of Black Moon include computer graphic footage creating the moon with different effects, such as red building towers simulating urban areas on the moon surface and computer-made moon surface close-ups. The editing techniques used enlarging, diminishing and rotating the visuals, matching the shapes of different objects, and at the same time, the visuals synchronizing the rhythm of music for certain areas.

5.    Choi Sai Ho, Signals, 2020 

Choi Sai-Ho’s music piece “Signals” was chosen by the music festival Sónar Calling and “Signals” was encoded into “0” & “1”, and sent to a far-away potentially habitable exoplanet called GJ273b in May 2018. Choi Sai-Ho and Lam Chi-Fai Jason subsequently use the same codes of “0” & “1” to make the visuals with red and blue objects representing “0” & “1” respectively. The video consists of 15 animation clips and each clip shows the “0” & “1” pattern started from a random position. The editing techniques used enlarging, diminishing and rotating the visuals, matching the shapes, and the visuals synchronizing the rhythm of music for certain areas. Continuing to explore the diversity of the artworks resonates with the long history of human aspirations in exploring the universe.

6.    Cao Shu, Tristes North Temperate Zone, 2018

This series starts with a tile, the first picture I have ever remembered. Later, after many years of training in remembering dreams, I gradually remembered that the shape of the fast ceramic tile was the floor tile of the toilet when I was more than one year old before my family moved for the first time. Later, I found the mapping of the floor tile in the mapping Library of 3D software. It is also a product of a certain era on the industrial assembly line. Coincidentally, Alastair's novel zima blue is also about a ceramic tile produced on an industrial assembly line.  I started with the tile in my home. Through dream records and family descriptions, I slowly assembled all the things about that home with 3D software. That space is also the place where the fragments of dreams in different periods occur repeatedly, a high-dimensional room that folds the lives of different ages into.

7.    Cao Shu, The One Man Who Lived Yesterday, 2019 

A voice runs through the film, the anonymous, dreamliked speaker, is telling a story about yesterday. The  voice of the speaker seems come from a different place,  from a different "incarnation", while the speaker himself  is hiding. Each of its incarnations is the shaper of "This  yesterday," and yesterday just made up the future.  "People who live Yesterday" is digital simulation image, continuing the author's exploration of digital  existence, multi-angle of view,and spatial narration.­­­­­­