Category: 2022 Blog

Cat Links Lecture 2: Filming the Modern Asian City

Reading Response: Ackbar Abbas

Posted on longkhan@connect.hku.hk

This part talks about the spirit of Hong Kong buildings. As an international metropolis in China, Hong Kong combines Chinese culture and western features with its own local culture. Many newly built buildings show the most cutting-edge design, but they abandoned the unique features of Hong Kong. The author is also concerned that Hong Kong may lose its unique feature after returning. This book was written in 1997 when Hong Kong returned. The author is a former professor at HKU. Hong Kong was one of the most developed cities, while China was getting more and more influential worldwide. Hence, how

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Cat Links Lecture 2: Filming the Modern Asian City

Reading Response: Ackbar Abbas

Posted on u3594195@connect.hku.hk

Abbas’s reading put out an interesting idea that we should be selective when persevering cultural architecture and think more about the cultural aspects of architecture. In the article, the author mentioned that in Hong Kong nowadays treat buildings as commodity and just let the market mechanism affect architecture. And as a result, those building that get well preserved or get the most exposure might not sufficiently represent Hong Kong culture. For instance, the Junk in Vitoria Harbor might often be seen in many movies and these famous architectures appear in the movie might be the first cultural impression of Hong

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Cat Links 2022 Blog, Lecture 2: Filming the Modern Asian City

[READING RESPONSE] Ackbar Abbas

Posted on Julia

Abbas wrote, ‘preservation is selective and tends to exclude the dirt and pain’. When a tourist recognises Hong Kong as a new city, they will visit Central instead of the hyperdensity in Sham Shui Po. The architectures that represent Hong Kong in the tourist’s eye are the Bank of China Tower, the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank, etc. However, these commercial buildings and so-called landmarks of Hong Kong can be put anywhere in the world. And what is hidden behind these flourishing pieces of stuff is the pain. For example, Kowloon Walled City was decided to be razed by the government

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Cat Links 2022 Blog, Lecture 2: Filming the Modern Asian City

Reading Response: Ackbar Abbas

Posted on u3584239@connect.hku.hk

The author explains the act of preserving Hong Kong’s cultural identity and building on it through architecture in this reading. The idea of the disappearance of cultural identity is brought up throughout the article. An example includes the Flagship house, both pieces of Hong Kong history from its colonial days, having its identity stripped away in order to be more appealing to the modern citizen. I find it interesting that the author himself has also been critical of the idea of preserving cultural identity through architecture, Kowloon Walled city as an example, people may be blinded by the act of

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Cat Links Lecture 2: Filming the Modern Asian City

Reading Response: Ackbar Abbas

Posted on u3579915@connect.hku.hk

If we look at the changing city view and skyline in Hong Kong in the past century, we would realise that contemporary cities are always changing among construction and deconstruction. Architectures were built to sever for several years and then demolished. This reminds me of a saying by Japanese architect Arata Isozaki “A ruin is the future of our city, and the future is the ruin itself.” Look back into Hong Kong, a colonial city in history. The footstep of the colonial history is disappearing in terms of the built environment and the politics. The destination of architectures is like that of human beings, both are fleeting moments in the

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Cat Links 2022 Blog, Lecture 2: Filming the Modern Asian City

[Reading Response: Ackbar Abbas]

Posted on u3595173@connect.hku.hk

The article explores various features of different kinds of architecture in Hong Kong and indicates the worrying fact that historical buildings, especially those belonging to colonial space have been disappearing for decades and will probably continue disappearing in the future. This inevitable disappearance apparently ignites a discussion on what exactly the identity of Hong Kong is. In fact, I found it is worthy to ponder the own identity of Hong Kong, which, in Ackbar Abbas’s view, is extremely difficult to be defined or found, since Hong Kong has been in the middle of two ‘coloniality’, namely Britain’s and China’s, as

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Cat Links Lecture 2: Filming the Modern Asian City

Reading Response: Giuliano Bruno

Posted on qshirley@connect.hku.hk

Starting from Andy Warhol’s Empire and other films, Giuliano Bruno analyzed and discussed the concept of reel time and architectonics of duration in his works. To develop the aesthetics embodied from the extended duration, he then further dived deep into films from Antonioni, Tsai Ming-Liang etc. and at last, concluded Warhol’s achievement as a preface of late-modernist aesthetics in the cinema by preoccupating with duration. Followed by the author’s pace, I figured out the difference between real time and reel time. Real time is the time in reality, while reel time is the time in the film, or in another word,

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Cat Links 2022 Blog, Lecture 2: Filming the Modern Asian City

Reading Response: Ackbar Abbas

Posted on u3585638@connect.hku.hk

Ackbar Abbas said in the text that conservation is optional and tends to exclude dirt and pain. So protection sounds like a good thing, but it doesn’t seem to be accepted in Hong Kong. Regardless of whether it was a good or bad memory in Hong Kong, I am grateful for every moment of their history. For example, cities with walls were among the messiest and criminal societies in human history, but Hong Kongers still discovered the beauty and opposed the dismantling project. The disappearance of identity and history is like hoarding old buildings. However, without a good strategy in

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Cat Links Lecture 2: Filming the Modern Asian City

[Reading Response: Ackbar Abbas]

Posted on u3585543@connect.hku.hk

To a moderate extent, I agree with the perspective of Abbas. Often in films, the portrayal of cities is fogged by generalization and trends and stray away from genuine portrayal. However, for Hong Kong to be identified as a generic city due to such occurrence is up for debate. Personally, residing in multiple countries, there are qualities of Hong Kong that cannot be found in other areas. While Hong Kong is known for being multicultural, there are still hints of historical genetics inside of buildings. It feels as if the buildings speak two languages, global and Cantonese. However, Abbas’s perspective

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Cat Links Lecture 2: Filming the Modern Asian City

Reading Response:Ackbar Abbas

Posted on u3585454@connect.hku.hk

After reading this article, I think “disappearance” is a double-edged sword for both architecture and social culture. Due to the complexity of Hong Kong’s history, the cultural and architectural diversity of Hong Kong exists. This diversity and the rapid development of Hong Kong have resulted in the city being constantly reinvented and rebuilt, and the desire to preserve some of the old culture in the midst of this diversity has resulted in, as Sharon Zukin’s argument puts it, “Hong Kong has become somewhat unrecognizable”. This is why the “disappearance” of Hong Kong architecture is mostly regarded as negative. The article

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