Reviews & Articles

(A review in English - below - & Chinese by John Batten of Hong Kong artist Chan Hau Chun’s exhibition Silent Sojourns at WMA space in Hong Kong, originally published in Artomity magazine, Summer 2024)

(一篇有關香港紀錄片工作者陳巧真的展覽英文藝評。 《陳巧真：踱步》。WMA space，香港。）

Images above:

Image 1:

Chan Hau Chun: Still from A room of many rooms (2019-2024), single-channel video projection, 27min16sec 

Image 2:

Chan Hau Chun: Section of A night of all nights, showing kitchen basin (diameter 35cm) and light bulb (diameter 5cm), installation view, 2024

Image 3:

Chan Hau Chun: Pages from Dream, transcript of a dream, zine, 2024  

All photographs: John Batten

陳巧真 

踱步 WMA空間 香港 2024年4月19日 至6月30日 

約翰百德 (John Batten)

香港紀錄片導演兼藝術家陳巧真的《踱步》是 WMA 2023/24年度主題「家」的第二個委託創 作項目。陳巧真於不起眼的辦公大樓內的WMA 空間中，將一個香港住宅單位分隔成獨立的黑色 板間房，重建成裝置藝術。陳巧真嘗試在這些狹 小的展覽房間內，重現她所述的「普通（住宅） 大樓」的室內氛圍。她沒有公開大樓的地點，有 可能是深水埗，因為那裡有許多類似的劏房。

Chan Hau Chun: Section of built sub-divided flat walls, installation view, 2024 (photo: John Batten)

陳巧真於2018年底第一次前往這棟大樓拜訪一 位「無家可歸的朋友」，在之後的五年裡，她都 會定期前往大樓，更住進大樓，並結識不同樓 層的住客。她於2019年開始拍攝，並與住客聊 天。她的作品包括一本精美的小冊子，如同雜誌 一樣。小冊子內有照片、繪畫、一兩句的格言、 一篇正式的說明文章和四首詩歌，陳巧真在小冊 子中概述了她個人的觀察、情感和對居民的反 思。展覽結合了對簡陋房屋的政治信息和以過份 藝術的形式呈現的居民生活，相當引人入勝。 

住屋長久以來都是香港的社會問題，簡單來說， 是因為政府依賴高價土地出售和私人地產發展的 土地溢價賺取收入。住宅物業隨後以高價售予私 人業主，讓他們用作自住和投資。公屋供不應 求，連中產人士也希望分一杯羹。因為與昂貴的 私人住宅相比，公屋的空間雖小，但價格非常低 廉。被迫以高價租賃私人住宅的有貧窮老人、新 移民、沒有資格申請公屋的內地家庭，以及有精 神、健康和吸毒問題的人。他們居無定所，只能 選擇狹小便宜的劏房。 

 陳巧真的展覽敏感而理據清晰，與最積極推動扶 貧改革的香港社區組織協會（社協）所描繪系統 性貧困的方式截然不同。社協與經驗豐富的攝影 記者合作，在許多展覽和出版書籍中明確推動 社會和住屋政策改革。這些書籍以及一段關於西 九龍的精彩影片展示了籠屋和劏房的惡劣居住環 境，紀錄了居民的真實故事。

Chan Hau Chun: Pages from Dream, transcript of a dream, zine, 2024  

在陳巧真的影片中，居民的情況都非常相似。在 展覽中，我們可以在他們居住的小房間裡觀看錄 製的採訪，見識和了解他們的生活。而另一段較 短的街頭拍攝影片，則提供了一種抽象疏離的背 景。房間完全由黑色牆壁分隔，像迷宮一樣。內 有一些照片、文字、昏暗的吊燈、發光的廚房鍋 和各種出版物供閱讀（包括一段夢的「謄本」） ，以及在畫滿塗鴉的地板上玩到一半的中國象棋 遊戲。展覽入口處有一張小桌子，上面以大字寫 了一張「提醒告示」：

               給自己的話 

                       記住，你所有的努力都 

                       毫無意義。提醒自己，你 

                       最終的夢想是自由地死去。

這些文字設定了展覽個人、有時感人的存在方 式。陳巧真寫道：「在可見與不可見的房間，在 不同時空中往返。在這裏，孤獨或許説是一種奇 特的共同語言，互不相識但共處一室。」

整個展覽都強調了這種感覺，但展覽的呈現方 式，包括佈局、影片播放位置、空間的黑暗程 度，以及居民本身等，也向參觀者展露了展示作 品的困難。參觀者可以閱讀陳巧真和展覽策展人 周麗珊關於「空間」的三頁精彩討論，文章讓人 窺探展覽製作的幕後故事，這些故事通常不會在 公開場合討論。

 藝術家的聲音無可避免地會充斥於展覽中，但對 陳巧真來說這卻是一件令她不自在的事。她作為 一名電影人，也許所有的感受都已經透過電影表 達，但展覽卻需要更多物件補充，而這些物件都 充滿其他細微的含義。陳巧真和周麗珊分享了她 們看待展覽的方式，因為展出的所有物件都對主 題有莫大影響。在一次交流中，陳巧真說：「為甚麼我不想呈現板間房的痛苦，是因為當中不只 是痛苦，還有美麗。還有人的溫暖和美好。」然 而，她亦明確說明了展覽的社會作用：「我之所 以開始這個項目，是因為我認為社會的結構和程 序已經剝奪（居民）人性太久了，所以我不想有 目的地入侵他們的生活，而是想設想他們存在的 複雜性。」

展覽要求參觀者閱讀許多藝術家提供的材料、觀 看影片，坐在不舒服的黑暗分隔空間裡思考居民 對於個人生活和處境的格言，所有文字都非常真 實。正如藝術家曾說，展覽可以是「向生活的美 麗和狡詐致敬」。

Review by John Batten:

Chan Hau Chun

Silent Sojourns

Hong Kong documentary filmmaker/artist Chan Hau Chun’s Silent Sojourns is the second project commissioned for WMA’s 2023/2024 theme of “Home.” Chan has reconstructed-as-installation a Hong Kong residential unit divided into separate, black-panelled rooms inside WMA Space, its gallery in a nondescript office building. In these small roomed, now-exhibition spaces, Chan attempts to recreate the inside atmosphere of what she describes as an “ordinary-looking (residential) building” housing many subdivided flats, in an undisclosed location in Hong Kong, possibly Sham Shui Po where many such flats are located.

Chan Hau Chun: Section of built sub-divided flat walls, installation view, 2024 (photo: John Batten)

Chan initially visited “a homeless acquaintance” in this building in late 2018. Over the following five years, she visited regularly and lived in the building, meeting residents from different floors. She began filming, including talking to residents, in 2019. In an excellent zine-like booklet, containing photography, drawings, one or two-line aphorisms, a formal explanatory essay and four pieces of poetry, Chan outlines her own observations, emotions and the reflections of residents. This exhibition is intriguing as it mixes a political message about sub-standard housing, with an overtly artistic presentation of the lives of residents in such poor accommodation. Therein lies a tension in approach that I will outline below.

Housing is Hong Kong’s most enduring social issue because (to keep it simple) the government relies on high-priced land sales and land premiums from private property development for revenue, residential property is then sold at high prices to private owners who consider it both home and investment. Public rental housing is sought-after, even by the middle-class, as it offers ultra-cheap, albeit small, accommodation compared to the high costs of private rental housing. Often caught in this private rental trap are the city’s elderly poor, recent immigrants and families from the mainland ineligible for public housing, and those with mental, health and addiction issues whose itinerant lives reduce their accommodation options to very small, cheaper rooms in subdivided flats.

Chan Hau Chun: Still from A room of many rooms (2019-2024), single-channel video projection, 27min16sec  (photo: John Batten)

Chan’s exhibition is sensitive and articulate and portrays systemic poverty completely differently from the organisation most active in poverty-alleviation reform, The Society of Community Organization (SoCO), whose many exhibitions and published books in collaboration with experienced photojournalists explicitly pushes for social and housing policy changes. These books (and an excellent video about West Kowloon) graphically show the poor living conditions of cage-homes and subdivided flats accompanied by graphic stories by individual residents.

In Chan’s videos the residents are similar; in the exhibition we meet and learn a little about their lives through videoed interviews inside the small homes in which they live. Another, shorter video, Wandering away from home, filmed on the street gives, I suppose, a context of abstracted alienation. Inside the completely black-walled, labyrinth-like, partitioned rooms, the exhibition also includes photographs, text, hanging dimmed lights, an illuminated kitchen basin, and various publications to read (including the ‘transcript’ of a dream), and a Chinese chess game in-progress on the ground amidst graffiti/scribblings on the floor. At the exhibition entrance is a large hand-written ‘reminder notice’ written on a small table-top:

         To me

                  Remember, all your hard work means

               nothing. Remind yourself that your

               ultimate dream is to die freely.

These words set the personal, sometime-poignant, existential approach to the exhibition. Chan states, “…Weary figures are eclipsed by the visible and invisible rooms, as they traverse different times and spaces. Here, solitude is perhaps a peculiar common tongue, shared among strangers living under the same roof.”  

Chan Hau Chun: Who will join me for a game of chess? (2024), installation view, with stool (hidden), 2024  (photo: John Batten)

This feeling is highlighted throughout the exhibition, but revealed to visitors is a struggle in how best to present the exhibition (the layout, the location of videos, the darkness of the spaces, etc), and by extension, the residents themselves. Available to read is a three-page discussion “on space” between Chan and the exhibition curator Chloe Chow. This is an extraordinary discussion as the ‘back-scenes’ of exhibition-making are private, usually never discussed in public.

Chan Hau Chun: Still from Wandering away from home (2019-2024), single-channel video projection, 10min48sec  (photo: John Batten)

The voice of the artist is inevitable in an exhibition, but is an uneasy position for Chan. Possibly, as a filmmaker it is the film that contains her entire message, but a physical exhibition requires additional added objects, and these are loaded with other nuanced meanings. Chan and Chow both discuss how to approach the exhibition as its physical appearance overinfluences everything. In one exchange, Chan says: “Perhaps, the reason I don’t want to show the agony of the partitioned rooms is that there is also beauty. There’s warmth and sweetness in it.” However, she is explicit of the exhibition’s social role: “...the reason I started this project is that I believe society’s structures and procedures have dehumanised them (the residents) for too long. So, I don’t want to invade their lives with a specific objective, but rather to envision the complexities of their existence.”

This exhibition requires the viewer to read much material provided by the artist, to watch videos and sit in uncomfortable, dark and tightly partitioned spaces, and consider the wise words about life and their circumstances by the residents, all honestly spoken. It can be taken, as the artist says at one point, as “…a salute to the beauty and cunning of life….”

Chan Hau Chun: Silent Sojourns

WMA Space, Hong Kong

19 April – 30 June 2024

Link to WMA: Chan Hau Chun: Silent Sojourns