The author staged a somehow astonishing idea that the plausibly historical-responsible actions we have done over these modern days, to preserve historic sites, to weave ‘traditional’ elements into construction of new buildings, have actually gave rise to the atrophy and evaporation of history. From this elaborately-composed literature, there are two impressive observations toward why it is causing this that I would like to discuss about.
One of the contributors to the ‘disappearance’, which has been brought forward by Abbas is that the unintended or unknowing casual paralleling of the ‘old’ and ‘new’ in the city in turn renders the image of Hong Kong history and identity quite disintegrated. In a time vocalizing ‘the dominance of visuality’, the public attach significant importance to the capability, materiality and usability of architecture as well as the city, in which we misappropriate this mentality of power also into our gaze at the old, traditional and historical sites. Abbas further elaborated on this idea of visual ideology by saying this thought-provoking quote that ‘the preservation of old buildings gives us history in site, but it also means keeping history in sight.’
The second key element composing of this disappearance has more practical significance, arousing reflection about the whole development path of Hong Kong: that is, the philosophy of facilitation. The aesthetics of simplification can be seen everywhere: that the city equates preservation of history to preservation of historical sites; that the pain and complexity in its colonial history which cannot be conveyed through a line of inscription was compressed into overt exhibition in the tea ware museum, that the way that the negligence of absence of democracy and lack of vernacular identity was readily addressed by building up a plausible image of international metropolis of unique position between the East and the West, and profit from that biased image. ‘The way ahead was never toward independence, but always toward hyperdependency.’ The image of Hong Kong is just like The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein, which was mentioned in the literature, decent and progressive by the appearance, standing on the shoulder of ancestral wisdom, a proud surviver over the test of time, if you neglect the distorted skull on the ground.
— Shen Ao 3035637424
I enjoy your eloquent synthesis of Abbas’ text with “historical-responsible actions” in preservation as the centre of focus. The concluding remarks on the image of Hong Kong through Hans Holbein’s The Ambassador is particularly fitting as the painting itself is the very symbol of the colonisers and the colonised. The Ambassadors, as colonisers, stood next to a shelf of apparatus which symbolise art, Christianity, and science – the western colonising mission; while the distant aloof gaze perhaps reminds us of the long-gone history of being a British colony albeit still being a hyperdependent city.