Author: YihanWei 

Cat Links Final Video Essay

[Video Essay] Crisis City

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Video link: https://youtu.be/z7j91E7NEdY Description of the theme: The maximum utilization of rooftops distinguishes Hong Kong from the other metropolises. The rooftop has been functioning as an alternative living place for the less-privileged working-class people since the post-war period.[1] The traditional residential feature is continuing and intensifying with the advance of modernization and urbanization, as the additional space provided by rooftops partly negotiates the tension between the scarcity of land resources and the consistent request for more space caused by the exceeding population and economic growth. In contemporary life, the rooftop is serving more functions in addition to a living place,

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Cat Links 2022 Blog, Lecture 6: Housing Stories

[READING RESPONSE] Joseph Rosa and Pamela Robertson Wojcik

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Both Rosa and Wojcik demonstrate the way modern domestic architecture helps to construct the film narrative and reflect the phenomenon and problems in modernism and urbanism, with a particular insight into the classical Hollywood movies in the sixties and seventies. In Rosa’s, there is a mutual dynamic between architecture and film in that “Hollywood films have both reflected and shaped American views about modern domestic design.”1 On one hand, the setting of modern dwellings presents urban life, along with technological and social developments. On the other hand, modern domestic architecture has fallen into a stereotype that arbitrarily and consistently associates

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Cat Links 2022 Blog, Fieldwork

[FIELDWORK] I’m Livin’ It, the McDonald’s

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I’m Livin’ It, DIR. Danny Wong (2019)            McDonald’s, Yaumatei (supposed, as it is artificially constructed with reference to several real McDonald shops), Hong Kong  Figure 1. McDonald’s is the only working shop with bright light and neon board in the streets. Scenes from I’m Livin’ it 2019, directed by Danny Wong. I’m Livin’ It (2019), named after McDonald’s advertising slogan “I’m Lovin’ It,” is a Hong Kong drama film directed by Danny Wong. Focused on a special group of lower-class vagrants, “McRefugees,” namely Bowen, Sam, and Uncle Wait alike, who stay overnight in the McDonald’s,

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Cat Links Lecture 4: Urban Everyday Spaces as Narrative

Reading Response: Nezar AlSayyad

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Nezar AISayyad’s essay establishes the relationship between technological modernity (say, image reproduction, camera and surveillance system) and the “power inequalities” lying in citizens’ unequal access to the capability of viewing others (AISayyad 2006, 186). “Voyeur” originates from “flâneur,” a typical 19th-century French literature figure who strolls in the urban (public) space for exploration and individual pleasure. Similarly observing the urban space for acquiring knowledge and pleasure, voyeur, however, is a rebirth and further development of the early modern idea in that the group physically stays distant from the scene they observed, taking advantage of the camera to hide behind the

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