EVERYDAY SPACES AS NARRATIVE
(I tried to connect these two materials together as I think the ideas conducted by these two writers could interrelated in some degree.)
How do we connect the place and space? As mentioned in the tutorial, when central, the physical existing place being full around by those domestic helpers from The Philippine, the flowing people seem to mobilize it and thus form and reshape a new space, to echo the concept introduced by Michel- to walk is to lack a place. The active form of walking people making the place passive and no longer stable and inflexible yet in another way to say, fresh and lively, disappearing and always in rebuilding in our subjective perception. That’s my understanding of this saying: walking is the best way to understand the city, as space itself is a narrative toward those varieties of places.
However, many Hong Kong architectures are now disappearing from those preservation projects conducted by government as mentioned by Abbas. Availing the Hong Kong Culture Centre as example, it placed the old and new architecture together as a symbol to reflect the colonial and traditional culture of Hong Kong, which is lack of aesthetic balance in visuality. As well as the example of the demolition of the Kowloon Walled city, it reveals the fact that preservation is abandoning the culture of the city in certain aspects. Abbas wrote, “The preservation of old buildings gives us history in the site, but it also means keeping history insight. A critique of preservation is therefore also a critique of visual ideology.” The city shouldn’t be formed by the map which edicts by the authority and market, and culture itself shouldn’t be standardized and equalize as what was globally defined perfect and tourism-orientated.
Those old, ugly and native spaces should also be preserved as a mobility narrative sight of the city places. Otherwise, what wrote by Abbas, “The destabilization of Hong Kong architecture is turning the local & visitors both into tourists.” Is getting realize, which accompanies the destabilizing of Hong Kong identity. As a student, I wouldn’t wanna see the real, fresh and lively Hong Kong disappear and could only be retrieved in films. I would rather be walking through the streets as the narrative way to introduce it toward traveler as it’s still attractive in the lively, reshaping space, which couldn’t be replaced by any photographs neither movie clips.
Iris Yeung,
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A good effort in bridging the concepts of Certeau and Abbas into your reflection. Well done.