One Square foot of sky (2014)
One square foot of sky was a site-specific performance and installation of video and drawings by the artists’ collective Foreign Investment, of which I am a co-founding member. The project was developed for Hong Kong and focussed on natural assets as commodities, especially the value of sky in relation to the value of property, culture and art. The installation consisted of 24-hour video footage of the sky while the performance entailed Foreign Investment and co-workers from China producing Sky Shares in the form of watercolours representing exactly one square of sky about the venue.
Oi! Contemporary Art Centre, North Point, Hong Kong
One Square foot of sky was part of a three-person exhibition curated by Ying Kwong entitled Collectors Club within the Sparkle! exhibition programme of young curators at Oi! Contemporary Art Space, Hong Kong. The other two artists in the exhibition were Lam Tung Pang and Liu Ding.
The projects Sky-mile (London and Berlin, 2013) and One square foot of sky (Hong Kong, 2014) examines society’s relationship with exchange values and asked ‘What commercial and emotional role does the sky have in a contemporary property driven culture?’ Progressing the socially and architecturally engaged practice of groups such as Superflex or WochenKlausur, Foreign Investment specifically question and challenge the established routes of commerce and transaction by disrupting them through acts of hospitality and generosity.
As a founder member of Foreign Investment I was project co-leader through the eighteen-month research and development of three events in which we used the sky to enable new cultural audiences to question the value of our natural ‘assets.’ We did this by creating new conceptual models for experiencing and understanding the link between landscape, ownership and labour. The pieces explore the speculative aspects of ‘value’ and ‘valuation’ and capitalist trading strategies in relation to ‘natural’ and ‘cultural’ assets. The performance appropriated Yves Klein’s ideas about the indefinable and incalculable value of art and nature. The question is how can nature and art be connected without nostalgia, in a language that is dominated by economics? One square foot of sky does provide an altered perspective on the relationship between property, labour and use value, by creating unique sky shares based on the square foot value of the landmass below.
The impact of the performance, public talk and exhibition lies predominantly outside academia. The Sparkle! exhibition series sought to bring art into daily life. Ivy Lin, Curator (Art Promotion Office Hong Kong) sees art as part of human culture, and as such the exhibition and performance formed part of a process of sharing experiences, knowledge and creativity with the ultimate aim to inspire to light up lives, creating an ideal world where mutual empowerment can take place.
Exhibition publication (booklet): Collector Club, published by Leisure and Cultural Service Department, January 2014, Hong Kong
Local HK press coverage
Public talk in Oi! Gallery
DVD and photographs of artefacts and site-specific performance
The work will also feature in Wild New Territories by Ron den Haas, published September 2016 by Black Dog Publishers, London.
Venue: Oi! Contemporary Art Centre, North Point , Hong Kong
23.01- 21.04.2014
One Square foot of sky was part of a 3 person exhibition curated by Ying Kwong entitled Collectors Club
Other:
Exhibition publication (booklet)
Website: www.collectorclub.org and www.foreign-investments.com
Local HK press
Public talk in Oi! Gallery
1 square foot of sky
1 square mile of sky
1 square mile of sky
1 square mile of sky