Moderation(s)

The long-term programme 'Moderation(s)' initiated by Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam and Spring Workshop (2011–18) in Hong Kong began hosting Latitudes for a month residency in Hong Kong. During this time, Latitudes investigated the urban territory from a curatorial perspective by looking into how it is articulated through specialist tours and attractions, both phenomena at the edge of the cultural, tourism and leisure sectors.

As part of their residency – and elaborating on the approach of their recent 'Incidents of Travel' at Casa del Lago, Mexico City – Latitudes invited four Hong Kong-based artists – Nadim Abbas, Ho Sin Tung, Yuk King Tan and Samson Young – to develop day-long tours, thus retelling the city and each participant’s artistic concerns through personal itineraries and waypoints. Alongside these ventures into the city, research around local forms of vernacular collection display and eccentric attractions was undertaken. This encompassed self-made or esoteric museums, museum-like retail spaces, or 'marginal' sculptural displays.

Nadim Abbas' itinerary plotted a course through a handful of sites in the city, which have in one way or another influenced the form, content, and processes of Nadim’s practice. Since Hong Kong has been his home for most of his life, some of these places have been all too familiar to him since childhood. This project offered him the opportunity to spring fresh surprises on unsuspecting 'tourists', and possibly on himself as well.

Ho Sin Tung's tour of Hong Kong revisited some of the diverse filming locations from her video 'Folie à deux' (2011), in which friends and colleagues read their favourite book passages aloud with their back to the camera. Through a reading-and-listening relationship, Ho Sin Tung associates intimate and unique memories with the locations chosen by each reader.

Yuk King Tan's tour engaged with systems of value: what is valuable and how does it appreciate? The tour was not only about looking at sites but about visiting the people that inhabit them and hearing their stories (including Mormon missionaries, the imam of a mosque, recycling-industry workers, and Filipina domestic helpers). Tan sees Hong Kong as a city that is rife with the potential for drama, fantasy and invention and her tour as part of a larger discussion about worth and that which cannot be quantified.

Samson Young's tour eavesdropped on his own works, in the presence of others. We took an early morning sound-walk around the Kwun Tong industrial district, visited a site in Central where the now demolished Queen's Pier was once located, looked out of a very specific window at the Creative Media Center, and trespassed the frontier closed area near the Hong Kong-China border. In between locations, we listened to recordings of music that has inspired his work in one way or another.