The Struggle of Spatial Politics

This satellite illustrates the organic relationship between artist-run spaces (ARS) and pop-up art events (PAE) in Hong Kong from the mid-1980s onwards.

While we read and review the Time Capsules vigorously, the student projects have yet to be fact-checked in their totality. We are sharing them openly as they are with the intention of building different thresholds from which others may discover new ideas for future research or build on existing explorations. We welcome your feedback, dialogue, and discussion. This project was originally published in August 2020. Last updated May 2025. 

This time capsule illustrates the organic relationship between artist-run spaces and pop-up art events in Hong Kong from the mid-1980s onwards. Artist-run spaces in this research refer to a spectrum of project spaces that are initiated and centred around the artistic expression of artists. Its definitions are not limited to the spaces that are exclusively maintained by artists. Artist-run spaces and pop-up art events overlap in terms of their site-specificity, non-permanency, and focus on artists, oftentimes appearing as responses to social events. Hence, it would be apt to study the interrelationship between artist-run spaces and pop-up art events from an experiential standpoint to shed light on how artists in Hong Kong were thinking about art in relation to space, and how they contrived strategies to respond to societal changes. Another goal of this research is to create a spatial experience of artist-run spaces and pop-up art events. To do so, the original presentation of this project at Asia Art Archive in 2020 included a video walkthrough of the spatial-temporal distribution of artist-run spaces and pop-up art events. This approach does not propose a single narrative that can be inserted inside an Art History canon—something that has arguably yet to claim Hong Kong Art History. Rather, this project researches Hong Kong Art History by organising raw data and then plotting them on a map to study their changing patterns, eventually pinpointing traits of Hong Kong art that are worthy of further discussion.

Looking at the early history of artist-run spaces and pop-up art events in Hong Kong, the two mirrored each other in their position and development. Both were responses to the “standard” white-cube art discourse. Owing to institutional limitations such as the repetitiveness of the exhibition model and limited community engagement, artists from the mid-1980s were keen to escape from conventional spaces to exhibit their works.[1] Artist-run spaces and pop-up art events were then categorized as “alternative spaces”—a vague umbrella that describes a wide variety of self-initiated art activities. Up until the 21st century, artist-run spaces in Hong Kong have demonstrated their plurality and individual focus, including but not limited to organizations like Videotage (est. 1986), The Quart Society (est. 1990), Para Site (est. 1996), and Museum of Site (est. 1997). Similarly, numerous pre-2000 pop-up art events addressed the same deficit of experimental opportunities. From the artist-initiated exhibition “Out of Context” (1997) to the “Save Oil Street” Artist Village movement in 1999, there is a yearning for independence within the art scene. A wish to be free from an established understanding of art and curatorial rigidity. Such desire, while in protest of institutional frameworks, is also often space-oriented. Space itself was a contested ground where artists and institutions vied for the right to speak and to be seen. Exhibiting seems to be an inextricable component of these pop-up art events.

Gradually, we see a rising wave of artist-run spaces and pop-up art events emerging in the early 2000s. Unlike their predecessors, these projects were not mere vehicles for artists to experiment with non-institutional presentations but also projects dedicated to neighbourhood and local micro-politics. Starting from the benchmark eviction of Oil Street Artist Village, the “Save Oil Street” campaign, and its tenants’ eventual forced relocation to Cattle Depot in 2001, artist groups have organised protest art events such as the movement against the demolition of Star Ferry Pier in 2006 and that of Queen’s Ferry Pier in 2007. There was an apparent shift of concern from artistic format to the human-land relationship. Artists were often using art as a guerilla tactic to disrupt a greater social agenda. That agenda was often in tension with public space, collective memory, and emotional attachment to land. The Times Square Incidents in 2008 captures how different groups of artists were dedicating their efforts to challenge an invisibly rigid understanding of space in a hypercapitalistic society. On 5 March 2008, the Hong Kong Legislative Council questioned the ownership and management of the 3,017 square-metre space in front of the Times Square shopping mall in Causeway Bay following public complaints of “security guards prevent[ing] them from sitting or remaining in the public area.”[2][3] That same day, an unknown group of Polytechnic University students placed a sofa with a “no sitting” sign in Times Square.[4] It was among the first of a series of interventions by different artists at the site.

The struggle between economic development and grassroots interest was further torn apart during the Anti-Hong Kong Express Rail Link Movement, eventually culminating in the Choi Yuen Tsuen Woodstock festival at the soon-to-be-demolished village along the track in 2011, which marked the single largest artistic intervention to a site-specific social issue. In the same year, the Occupy Central movement broke out. Debates around how artists can reclaim agency in the land-political struggle were heated. The format of occupation often predestines artists’ method of participation. Artists functioning as public advocates had grown to be a less favourable path when society felt misrepresented as a whole. The role of an artist faced a critical need for redefinition.

Remnants of Occupy Central reignited in 2014 in the form of the Umbrella Movement. Occupation has acquired a new meaning with its newfound explosiveness and extended duration. In the Mong Kok occupation area, Wooferten (est. 2009) launched an improvisational competition about designing cottages used in protest occupation.[5] The participatory art project invited the public to reimagine urban land use and its subsequent living style. Through these forms of pop-up art events, artists lend themselves as mediators to a greater socio-political context. These experiences of short-term projects were preserved into long-term usage. Entering the post-Umbrella era, there was an abundance of artist-run spaces opening in residential neighborhoods, particularly around the West Kowloon area. Things that can happen (est. 2015) and PRÉCÉDÉE (est. 2017) were notable examples of how artist-run spaces were downsizing to small or non-scale. This tendency continued in 2019 when the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement and COVID-19 pandemic broke out. Both protest and pandemic restrictions prompted artists to conduct their projects in a fluid manner. This change in visual culture introduced more nuance to the boundary between artist-run spaces and pop-up art events, rendering our previous understanding of space obsolete. It remains a curious subject of how the “new normal” would hold the future configuration of artist-run spaces and pop-up art events in Hong Kong.

Footnotes

[1] Leung Mee Ping, “梁美萍 (創始成員) | Leung Mee Ping (Founding Member),” 29 September 2020, YouTube video, 14:24, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrIDuLrom00.

[2] Anthony Leung Po Shan and Seth Denizen, “Privatising Public Space: Times Square Incidents in Hong Kong,” Asia Art Archive, 1 April 2015, https://aaa.org.hk/en/like-a-fever/like-a-fever/privatising-public-space-times-square-incidents-in-hong-kong. 

[3] Diana Lee, “Pushy Times Square guards raise hackles,” The Standard, 5 March 2008, https://web.archive.org/web/20080315052955/http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?pp_cat=11&art_id=62525&sid=17904294&con_type=1&d_str=20080305&sear_year=2008. 

[4] Leung, “Privatising Public Space: Times Square Incidents in Hong Kong.”

[5] Woofer Ten, “拾德好！超級佔領小屋設計大賽！(暨年輕人上車計劃) [Good Collect! Super Occupation Cottage Design Competition (and young people house ownership program)],” Facebook, 12 October 2014, https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152542601343089.1073741840.137694588088&type=3 for more information.

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Wong Tin Lok was a participant in the Hong Kong Art Workshop, a class of the Department of Art History at The University of Hong Kong in collaboration with Asia Art Archive, in 2020.