[VIDEO ESSAY] Private City

 

SYNOPSIS, THEME, SETTING & COMPONENTS

Ours, but not ours.

Following a busker on a performing-space scouting journey, competing for private space on Mong Kok’s pedestrian bridges, “Private City” investigates the city’s public space appropriation, privatization, and contestation, as well as how such micro-manifestations of guerilla urbanism impact circulation and the rhythm of the city.

Footbridges – 1,043 pieces of shared urban infrastructure across Hong Kong (Highways Departments, 2022), are frequented by commuters to efficiently traverse through this walkable, multi-layered city (Ho et al., 2022).

As De Certeau (1984) argued, possibilities organized by the spatial order are actualized by occupants and traversers. The interconnected, elevated spatial organization of covered footbridges, designed to grant pedestrians convenience and distant them from the polluted, traffic-dominated ground (Moir, as cited in Kwan and Yu, 2022), creates opportunities for its use as a shelter with a sense of anonymity and seclusion. When footbridges are situated in the densest district on earth – Mong Kok (Kwan and Yu, 2022), their loose and neutral designs attracted those driven outdoors by circumstances – performers, domestic helpers, and the homeless, to adjust and appropriate the site to their needs (Wang, 2014). From the lens of a competing busker traversing through the Sai Yee St. footbridge system and the Waterloo Road footbridge, the film explores how privatizers defy social conventions, even government regulations to privatize and compete for the space (Lam, 2011), using both tangible and intangible tools. 

The film’s story-driven exploration of the competition for, and the privatization of footbridge spaces reveals that although the footbridges are built for us who traverse the city,  it also exists simultaneously as someone else’s private space that we should respect.

 

Research Methodology

The research methodology of this film involves ethnographic research and secondary research. As the social phenomenon of footbridge occupation is journalistically publicized, I opted to focus more on the less-documented space of the pedestrian bridge instead of the occupants. In both streams of research, I targeted the spatial characteristics, conflicts, and more, all about the spaces of the pedestrian bridges. 

 To thoroughly understand different privatizers’ perception of the footbridge space contest, ethnographic research was conducted. I immersed myself in the aforementioned footbridges’ environment, mingling with 1. a group of domestic workers and 2. Two Homeless men for 15 – 30 minutes. As I sat on carpets beside the interviewees, I understood the interviewees’ reasons for occupying the space, their perception of the footbridges’ spatial conditions and other finer details through the interviews. I also experienced and observed the space through touch, smell, sight and hearing, to gain an objective understanding of the occupants’ experience.

Simultaneously, I conducted secondary research, beginning by reviewing materials documenting the space privatization approaches used by the privatizers, such as news articles and photos of domestic workers’ gathering on the footbridges, the busking association’s guidelines to unspoken positioning conventions to supplement my observations. I then studied reports and articles discussing less observable topics, akin to the design and purpose of footbridges in Hong Kong, theories on public space contestation and appropriation, as well as micro-scale guerilla urbanism to enrich my understanding of the phenomenon. When I conducted ethnographic research, I also browsed through news reports and articles about the footbridges I filmed on, to understand why the situation turned into how it is today by comprehending their history and design features.

 

Film Production

Attempting to increase audience engagement, I connected the film with an overarching narrative of a busker searching for performing space and presented the public space privatization through his perspective. The narration also softens the tone of the language to improve audience comprehension hence immersion.

The film production process began with script writing and storyboarding, where I embedded the research findings naturally in the script, and storyboarding, where I sketched to pre-visualize the composition of the shots and camera angles to ensure that they could visually present the film’s ideas. 

While shooting the clips, one key technique applied is the compression of time with time-lapses. The occupants change the space and human circulation around it as people avoid invading their personal spaces. To visually depict this characteristic, I emphasized the stasis of the occupants using time lapses. The compression of time and rapid flow of pedestrians visually presents the spatial impact and temporal “permanence” of the privatized spaces.

Another key technique used are axial jump cuts, where the busker’s reactions upon seeing the footbridges’, spaces are first shown through close ups to build audience anticipation, then the camera jumps to show long shots of the footbridge to reveal the situations of privatization and contest for space. Used not only to visualize the realization of the busker (StudioBinder, 2021), the technique is also adopted in order to utilize the busker as a fixed scale reference, allowing the audience to understand the scale of different footbridges featured in the film through comparison.

CHUNG Chi Yui (UID: 3036002808)

References

Highways Department (2022). Footbridges and Subways of Hong Kong. https://www.hyd.gov.hk/en/information_corner/hyd_factsheets/doc/e_Footbridges_and_Subways.pdf

Kwan S. N. L., & Yu, A. (2022). City of Skywalks: Exploring Hong Kong’s Public Space and Power of Discourse from Footbridges. Social Sciences 11, 546 https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci11120546

Hong Kong’s public space problem – BBC Worklife (reveals that hk each person has only 2.7m sq. of urban public space per capita)

 

(Wang, 2014) Loose Space, Inclusive Life: A Case Study of Mong Kok Pedestrian Bridge as an Everyday Place in a Densely Populated Urban Area – ProQuest

 

1. De Certeau, M. (1984). Spatial Stories. In The Practice of Everyday Life (pp. 115-130), translated by Steven Randall. Berkeley: University of California Press.

(De Certeau, 1984)

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03zw4RNv0gE&t=1s

What is a Jump Cut?

 

Video references

 

Size of Standard DH Room in Hong Kong | AsiaXPAT (size of domestic helper rooms)

 

Suitable Accommodation: the Struggle for Space for Migrant Domestic Workers in Hong Kong – THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE (spatial needs)

 

Performers:

 

Gov’t set to permanently shut down Mong Kok’s pedestrianised zone in August – Hong Kong Free Press HKFP (hongkongfp.com) (Migration)

Hong Kong Free Press. Government to permanently shut down Mong Kok’s pedestrianized zone in August. Hong Kong Free Press

 

The Last Days of a Hong Kong Street for Singing Your Heart Out – The New York Times (nytimes.com)

The New York Times (2018). The Last Days of a Hong Kong Street for SInging Your Heart Out. The New York TImes. 

 

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjv-auatfH-AhVRM94KHQTvBQwQFnoECDkQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au%2F-%2Fmedia%2Fcorporate%2Ffiles%2F2020-07-migrated%2Ffiles_s-3%2Fsydney-busking-code.pdf%3Fdownload%3Dtrue&usg=AOvVaw2vwp3QIHtsgEyq7fZQ-epp

 

Secondary sources used in the video essay

https://youtu.be/FGf5J2bITrQ 

 

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/community/article/2146517/hong-kong-pedestrian-zone-be-scrapped-after-more-1000

 

https://youtu.be/FAXWwqa0-AE

 

https://youtu.be/KEFQ9WJ9Pyw

 

https://youtu.be/0_12mDgz6u8