Placemaking/Homemaking

Placemaking/Homemaking presents a series of video works and artistic research revolving around the experience of displacement. From Lee Kai Chung’s re-enactment of Japanese agricultural emigrants’ long march on the Manchurian wasteland in the early 20th century, to Cici Wu’s dream-like rendering of the home-coming of Yu Man Hon, a young autist Hong Kong boy who went missing at the Shenzhen-Hong Kong border at the turn of the 21st century, the project connects historical and present, factual and fantastic, exploring the continuous identity lost and search in East Asia that come with its modernity.

Part of the project looks into the emotional aftermath of recent social movements in Hong Kong, and the increasingly destabilised concept of “home”. Filmmaker-duo Chan Hau Chun and Chui Chi Yin interview their friends about personal objects they hold close; farmer and artist Lo Lai Lai contemplates on extended meanings of “home” through the perspectives of migratory birds in New Territories, Hong Kong. Meanwhile, members from Xiē, based in Beijing, Hong Kong, Minnesota, and Taipei, exchange events of their daily life in 2022 and their uncertainty about home.