Re-Inscribing the City: Art, Occupation, and Citizen Journalism in Hong Kong

Publisher:
Taylor & Francis (Routledge)
Publication Type:
Journal Article
Citation:
Globalizations, 2013, 10 (03), pp. 465 - 479
Issue Date:
2013-02-23
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As neoliberal restructuring destroys historic precincts in Hong Kong, these spaces’ social and living histories take on new meanings for the city’s disenfranchised citizenry. In 2006 the impending demolition of Hong Kong’s iconic Star Ferry Pier and Queen’s Pier inspired a new form of spatial and cultural politics, which spawned unanticipated civic participation in the struggle to own the city. A lengthy cycle of oppositional actions interwove imaginative interventions, occupations, and investigative reportage, creating ‘temporary affective spaces’ around the piers. Contributors to the online citizen journalism site Hong Kong In-Media reframed sentimental mainstream media narratives by connecting urban development to political agency. The grassroots piers movement is significant because it seeded a new social movement in Hong Kong, one which shares resonances with Chinese protest culture and the global Occupy movement. Moreover, the organically constituted social formation of protesters perhaps materialises the philosophical concept of the ‘multitude.’
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