[Video Essay] Construction City

Construction City
—— A Collective Unconsciousness Construction and An Alleyway Narration in Hong Kong City
—— A Video Essay for David & Alleyway

If the city is compared to a giant beast that swallows and throws up material and spirit, the arteries flowing in its body are highways and roads. The headlights flash like neon meteors, and people’s greatest desires rush on. Then there are those pedestrian bridges, those small roads without traffic lights, like veins that cycle people’s desire to go home, branch out from arteries and spread all over the city. Finally, we can find capillary-like alleys between organic buildings.

Unlike highways, alleys are not deliberately constructed, and most alleys are forced to be sandwiched between organic functional areas. The functional area here presents a metaphor different from “vascular-transportation-public transportation”. The functional area assumes a role other than transportation and is established for a certain urban construction function, which is a pragmatic application. An unintentional alley is formed between the two functional areas. Such alleys are quite different from highways and roads that are intended to be built. Highways are planned and created through taxation and planning, and they also have a subjective function. It is built as an active act to assume the primary role of public transport.

We can see in this pattern the similarity to the theory of the group unconscious (Jung, 1980). Expressways and highways are understood as the subjective part of the urban narrative. There are not many main roads, but they can assume the main function, and above them is a bright and open group consciousness. Where am I going today? Which way am I going today? Every subjective thought of people in the city is directly reflected on the main road. The main road is bright and magnanimous, carrying the functions of the basic consciousness part. The alley forms a strong contrast with the main road. Compared with the bright main roads, the alleys are especially dark and damp, which is obvious in Hong Kong. The alley carries an impromptu, purposeless narrative.

So, I structured my video like in such a way. First, I chose the David statue (di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, 1504) and myself. The statue itself constructs a common nature shared by all human beings (Anderson, 2016). Then I connect David with me, constructing a relationship from the general to the specific.

Then I covered David’s and my eyes with paintbrush and tape. The “eye” that heralds consciousness and subjective action disappears, and the unconscious takes the stage (Bruxelmane J et al., 2020).

What follows are four classic narratives about what happens in the alleys of Hong Kong: drunkenness, fighting, chasing, and drug trafficking.

The alley is an important image in film and literature. The author favors the use of subconscious expressions. For example, an alcoholic must wander in the alleys, which is an unconscious wandering. For another example, detective novels favor the sense of tension and crisis reflected in the alley, which is exactly in line with what Freud advocated in the analysis of the unconscious, which is the accumulation of crises and anxieties that we cannot resolve.

Drunk, I chose “New Police Story” starring Jackie Chan.

For the fight, I chose Wong Kar Wai’s “As Tears Go By”.

For the chase, I chose Wong Kar Wai’s “Chungking Express” and Oshii Mamoru’s “Ghost in the Shell”.

And for drug trafficking, the more unconscious drug trafficking in the alleys, rarely appears in Hong Kong films. Most of the drug trafficking in Hong Kong films are big syndicates, so I chose a more realistic narrative and selected some real photos (Anna Healy Fenton, 2015).

I chose the alleys of Mong Kok, Yau Ma Tei, Central and Kennedy Town as important backgrounds for the video. My technical means are iPhone13 Pro and stabilizer. I shoot solo. I chose slow-motion footage and time-lapse photography to imitate Wong Kar Wai’s Hong Kong narrative. I imitated pantomime, using body movements to describe a non-subjective, unconscious, dialogue. The length of the video has added a certain amount of mixed editing to compare the narrative method, and the original content after the editing has been removed is 2 and a half minutes long.

Hong Kong is a city where symbols are superficial, full of metaphors and chaos (Takeuchi Atsushi, as cited in David, 2011), full of strong symbols. When we do a mass psychoanalysis of the city, we find that it is a very restless city. The fast-walking pace of fishes-like office workers in Central clearly reflects the anxiety of the city. And in the dilapidated, cramped rooms just across the street from giant skyscrapers and neon screens are crowded families, and a strong sense of instability constitutes the city. And the most important image is every chaotic alley. The alleys are often full of kitchen waste, and the ground is full of puddles formed by air-conditioning water that has fallen from high places, and floating rainbow colors of oil stains. It was extremely dim and caught between the skyscrapers, and when I looked up, I could only see a gap-like sky. All kinds of tools are placed in the alley, and there is no obvious connection between the tools, and they are placed in a meaningless mess.

Therefore, we walk in the alleys, like walking in the capillaries of the city. Roaming, loss of purpose, restlessness, and dimness together constitute the basic image of the alley in the narrative of Hong Kong.

Credit:
Director: HOU Xiyuan
Photographer: HOU Xiyuan

Reference:

Anderson, S. (2016, August 17). David’s ankles: How imperfections could bring down the world’s most perfect statue. The New York Times. Retrieved May 12, 2022, from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/magazine/davids-ankles-how-imperfections-could-bring-down-the-worlds-most-perfect-statue.html

Bruxelmane J, Shin J, Olyff G, Bazan A. Eyes Wide Shut: Primary Process Opens Up. Front Psychol. 2020;11:145. Published 2020 Mar 3. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00145

Chan M. S. (Director). (2004). 新警察故事 [New Police Story] [Film]. Emperor Motion Pictures

David. (2011, March 8). Recreating Ghost in Hong Kong. Randomwire. https://randomwire.com/recreating-ghost-in-hong-kong/
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di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, M. (1504). David [Carrara marble sculpture].Florence, Italy: Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze.

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Oshii M. (Director). (1995). 攻殻機動隊 [Ghost in the Shell] [Film]. Production I.G

Wong K. W. (Director). (1988). 旺角卡門 [As Tears Go By] [Film]. In-Gear Film Production

Wong K. W. (Director). (1994). 重慶森林 [Chungking Express] [Film]. Jet Tone Productions