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#5_Hong Kong
a project by Silvia Calderoni and Ilenia Caleo together with Rebecca Wong Pik-kei
graphics and post-production CHEAP street poster art
project curated by Paola Granato
writing Ilenia Caleo
translation Ilaria Patano
production of For The Time Being (Prototyping the Queering Platform) by Freespace, West Kowloon Cultural District Hong Kong SAR
SO IT IS_Hong Kong is the fifth stage of SO IT IS project. An invitation to the performer and choreghapher Rebecca Wong Pik-kei to embrace a practice and build an unpredictable imaginary of what bodies can be and do.
We met Rebecca during these months remotely exchanging materials and ideas – the encounter with Rebecca’s work was built and suggested by Kee Hong Low, who is curating For The Time Being together with Silvia Bottiroli.
Rebecca created her poster starting from the rules we wrote to communicate the imaginative practice of SO IT IS:
- each poster is one and unique, like our bodies (as long as it is not our desire that changes this
indication)
- the shot is full-length, the body is naked
- the size of the poster is full size
- the body is at rest and not in an action
- the interventions on the body are carried out in graphic post-production / photomontage
- each poster is posted in a different city
- the artist chooses the exact place for the posting, based on their city and the communities that
live there.
Free to respect, to reinterpret and to betray the rules Rebecca imagined a poster that embodies also Hong Kong’s social and political situation in a state of flux and social turmoil for almost three years starting with social movements and then the global pandemic.
“When our ancestors encounter a disaster, no matter if it is natural or man-made, the first action will be asking the gods to bless us. We develop the idea of blessing charms and reconstruct them with different parts of the body, both intimate and familiar, in the hope of encouraging urbanites to use their bodies as vessels for the ultimate liberation of the body and mind” – that’s what Rebecca writes around the idea of her project.
The poster is exhibited during Novembre 16-27th in the frame of the exhibition LOVE +: Awaking curated by Kalen Lee (HK).
Throughout its stages, SO IT IS _# weaves a network of affections and relations: a practice of contact with the people we will meet and the communities surrounding them, materialising in an urban, non-virtual space. It is a gesture of infestation of public spaces.
The action-matrix which inspired SO IT IS_Roma came to life in Bologna in 2020, within the public art project La lotta è fica, designed and curated by CHEAP street poster art. Now it thrives and transforms through other bodies and places.
The map of posters will be put together, stage by stage.
Rebecca Wong Pik-kei is a performer and choreghapher, a graduate of the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. Wong’s choreography and performances question stereotypes from a female perspective. Sometimes provocative her works evoke a revaluation of attitudes by and towards – women, body and desires, especially sex.
Major works include: when time limps, Woman.Body, 19841012, Nook and Bird-Watching. With performances in Iceland, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, China and Australia.
Wong studied Butoh under master Yukio Waguri’ and participated in the theatre production, White Room in 2016. Earning a scholarship in 2017 she joined the Atlas choreography workshops at the ImPulsTanz Vienna International Dance Festival. In 2018 Wong participated in Creative meeting Point: Hong Kong x Barcelona a residency exchange programme with the support of West Kowloon. Bird-Watching was part of The Message Behind the Wall by 198491 winner of the Outstanding Small Venue Production 2019.
In April 2021, she was supported by Tai Kwun (HK) to create a full-length solo work, Under∞Line. In September of the same year, she was commissioned by the Freepsace of West Kowloon Cultural District The Future of Performance series; as one of the lead members of A Thousand Plateaus, a new media production. Her works interrogate theater's value in a turbulent generation.