Over the Head (2024)
Installation view of Over the Head (2024) (attached on wall).
Sourced and generated from a collection of photos of the harbour, ranging from some of the earliest ones archived in the Wellcome Collection to modern-day advertisements and publicity of multinational corporates and governments, the harbour in the video shifts infinitely within a fixed range of elevated view. Whereas the background narration looks at authoritative utterances by scrutinizing and paraphrasing an assemblage of statements, newspeak and theories from scientific and political spheres.
Installation view of Over the Head (2024).
Over the head was drawn from speeches, pronouncements, and deliverances since the artist came upon an archival typescript in the Wellcome Collection, titled and written for Lecture on Hong Kong by Sir James Cantlie in 1898. In the lecture he delivered as the Dean of the Hong Kong College
of Medicine for Chinese during the British colonial era, he started by highlighting the geographical features of Hong Kong. Within the chain of granite peaks, ‘the peak’ marks the highest point; whereas the origin of Hong Kong’s name was presumably interpreted from its natural harbour. It then comes to mind that condescending languages have always been alongside an abiding way of looking at the symbolic part of the place from a bird’s eye view.