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Palm
Springs. Imagineering California in Hong Kong
Paper presented at the 4th International Conference on Environmental
Aesthetics and Semiotics, “Culture, Nature, Semiotics:
Locations IV”. September 23–26, 2004 Tallinn–Tartu,
Estonia.
A
different version was published in David Blamey (ED) "Here,
There, Elsewhere. Dialogues on Location and Mobility",
Open Editions, London, 2001.
Abstract
Tours and Dérives
In this essay I intend to revisit an urban intervention, Abstract
Tours, I realised in Berlin in 1997, discuss its critical
potential and highlight the relationship between this project
and the Situationist practices of dérive and
détournement.
Moulding
Time
Here I put Hong Kong mould under the microscope and observe
the interplay of organic and inorganic matter. Wandering through
a network of metaphorical associations and connections, transferring
or deferring meaning from the realm of familiar experience
into the realm of the unfamiliar, the process becomes analogous
to that set off by fungi, most of which are recyclers, "process
engineers", change agents.
This
text was published in Gutierrez, Portefaix, Ruggeri (Eds.)
HK Lab 2, Map Book Publishers, Hong Kong, 2005.
The
Erotics of the Shopping Mall
In shopping malls we find the implicated shadows of self,
desire, and consumption in amongst the goods on display and
the crowds of people. Cruising, stalking, soliciting, voyeurism,
fetishism make up a large and often neglected aspect of the
shopping mall experience. In the backstage, behind glittering
shops and marble-clad walls, one can navigate the soft belly
of the mall. There are no security cameras, floors and stairs
are concreted and pipes hung overhead. Shop assistants and
cleaners congregate, eat or rest on the steps. Smokers join
them for a puff, lovers exchange languid caresses.
This
essay was published in Gutierrez, Portefaix, Ruggeri (Eds.)
HK Lab2, Map Book Publishers, Hong Kong, 2005.
The
Naked Harbour
An abridged version of this article featured in the architecture
and design magazine Abitare, vol.450, May 2005.
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