Empty Space

In the past few years, there has been on-going redevelopment of some old districts such as Kwun Tong and North Point. Very recently, the plan to redevelop Kowloon City was launched, Jumbo Floating Seafood Restaurant, which has a history of more than 40 years, left Hong Kong to find another abode. Old memories melted to clear the site for new and perfect solids and orders.

In this huge wave, in the liquid community, individuals search for the group they can belong to, search for their position, just like a particle searching for its 3D coordinates under the traction of virtual forces in fluid simulation software. Empty Space focuses on the keyword “Liquidity”, which was inspired by Zygmunt Bauman’s research on Post-modernity. He described modernisation as a process of liquefaction from the start. It takes change as the only permanence, emphasises on speed and flexibility in time, and the obsessive, compulsive, unstoppable modernisation. The pursuit of a new and perfect “liquid modernity” brings about a forced and obsessive, continuous and perpetual modernization, and the places without this purpose have become invisible and empty spaces that do not need to be given meanings.

In watching and playing, we read the blank background, trying to find the empty space under the squeeze of modern construction, the lightness of the intimate relationship between communities, the ambivalence and ambiguity between solid and liquid, individual and community, and heaviness and lightness.