The word “creativity” is sometimes used as a buzzword linking the imagination with the activities of profit-making enterprises. It has been used to gloss over exploitative aspects of contemporary capitalism, linking free-wheeling consumerism with ostentatious acts of meaning-making, hence justifying the production of standardised cultural goods that lull society into passive consumption, as encapsulated in Adorno and Horkheimer’s notion of the culture industry. In contrast to this, the title of this one-day symposium allies the heterogeneity of Hong Kong community cultures with artful meaning-making. Hong Kong Creative Cultures is about shared human values and cultural heritage within a specific social and political milieu. Creative cultures can be unsettling, disruptive and troublesome just as they can be (in Heideggerian terms) spaces of building, dwelling and thinking. They can be sites of the lived space of everyday experience rather than the conceived space of rational urban planning, to use Henri Lefebvre’s distinction.

We welcome papers exploring various aspects of Hong Kong’s creative cultures as encapsulated in narratives (both popular and literary), visual art, social media, government policy, public discourse, social systems, and more. Possible fields for exploration include (but are not limited to) the creative practices of everyday life, the practice of curating, the roles of museums and other cultural institutions, the histories of Hong Kong creative culture, literary portrayals of Hong Kong’s creative culture, the performance of Hong Kong culture, street cultures, and creative forms of political protest.

Date: Saturday 9 November 2019
Venue: Chinese University of Hong Kong

Organisers: Tammy Lai-Ming Ho, Michael O’Sullivan, Eddie Tay and Michael Tsang

Morning sessions are devoted to academic papers while afternoon sessions are devoted to networking and sharing get-togethers that explore future possible collaborations between academics and cultural workers in the Hong Kong community. We plan to invite curators, artists, arts administrators and those working in creative cultural sectors to give informal talks about their work in the afternoon, to share ideas and explore possible avenues for future collaborations.

Abstract Submissions:
Please send 250-word abstracts (for 15-20 minutes presentations) by Monday 30 September 2019 to Eddie Tay at eddietay@cuhk.edu.hk for consideration.