3035983756 Jasmine Zhang Ziqi
Park (particularly promenade areas in western and central district) – Info city
Research question: how does the space of promenade serve as the production of ideology in a capitalist society?
Research method – By referring to the central arguments of Lefebvre Henri in his book The Production of Space, “Every social space is the outcome of a process with many aspects and many contributing currents……,” in other words, we can understand that city is a production of ideology, culture, and history. I attempt to employ this idea to examine the living environment of Hong Kong, which offers me a chance to jump out of my identity as a resident in this city and observe it from an in-depth perspective. With this in mind, how do you perceive the promenades, as one of the social spaces in Hong Kong? Take the promenade areas in western and central district as example, people use these areas for walking, running, fishing, or holding some public gatherings etc. Interestingly, this area was intentionally created through land reclamation. In a capitalist society, urban planning is utilized as a way to legitimize capitalist activities. However, in cities like Hong Kong, an expansion of land is usually expected for solving housing problems. For citizens in Hong Kong, promenades function as public space where people bring their private life there more or less, so that the narrow living conditions would not be that frustrated since they do not need to meet desires other than basic living needs. Therefore, this public place had already become part of the capitalism system.
Video Production – In this video, I tried to use a couple of techniques to make the main theme of “running” clear for the audience.
• Montage: By cutting several scenes of people together, I try to depict how people utilize this public place and enjoy their leisure time. This explains the functions of the leisure parks and how people carry out their life there. These shots connect the whole story as well even the plot is quite simple.
• Timelapse photography: the time-lapse scene at the end illustrates how time flies within one space. This also present an inner feeling of the protagonist – a mixed feeling of loneliness and confusion. That could be an illustration of most people’s heart who live in a big city.
• Music: I chose the song The Lost Generation「迷航」by Glow Curve, a Chinese rock band from Beijing. The lyric of this song has many philosophical significances, encouraging people to reflect on their life, which is also the theme I try to address in this research.
Video Theme – When being a part of this space, walking along the coastline, what are we really looking at? The skyscrapers or the sea? Even when we look across the sea, there are just high-rise buildings on the other side. In this sense, we are looking back on our hustle life again. In this film, we are following the sight of this running person. Through her eyes, maybe we can have a sense that what we are really paying attention to this city. In the beginning, we are running through the promenade and all we see is people, high buildings on the other side, and the silent sea. There are two clues throughout the film. First is the International Commerce Centre, which could be seen as a representation of economic advancement of the city. The further we run, the larger the building. Being inspired by my personal running experience, as the image of this skyscraper become clearer, a sense of anxiety and insecure would rise. The second one is the behavior of running. For me, running offers me a period to escape my pressure and meditate. It also could be seen as an analogy of “running in the jungle of steels and irons”. When we are hustling in a city like this, what we are looking for from the bottom of heart? I wish this film can make the audience to think about this and make a view that how capitalist and industrialized society had changed us.
Note
1. Barreiros Proença, Sérgio, Francesca Dal Cin, Cristiana Valente Monteiro, Maria Inês Franco, Maria Matos Silva, and Nawaf Saeed Al Mushayt. 2023. “The Urban Public Space between Land and Sea: The Case of Quarteira, Portugal.” Land 12 (3): 539. https://doi.org/10.3390/land12030539.
2. Christ, Melissa Cate, and Hendrik Tieben. 2020. “Magic Lanes: A Placemaking Approach for Laneway Spaces in Hong Kong.” In Asian Alleyways, edited by Marie Gibert-Flutre and Heide Imai, 181–210. An Urban Vernacular in Times of Globalization. Amsterdam University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1b0fvwq.11.
3. Duncan, Peter. 1996. “Hong Kong’s New Town Planning and Park Design.” Landscape Australia 18 (2 (70)): 165–74.
4. Morton, Brian. 1996. “Protecting Hong Kong’s Marine Biodiversity: Present Proposals, Future Challenges.” Environmental Conservation 23 (1): 55–65.
5. Owen, Bernie, and Raynor Shaw. 2007. “Hong Kong Island and Lamma.” In Hong Kong Landscapes, 189–206. Shaping the Barren Rock. Hong Kong University Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt2jc1c0.20.