Evening Sky

Freedom Ball

2009-11-10T00:41:00.003+08:00

At long last the large-scale Freedom Ball event has arrived. 1000 large red balls will be appearing in Shatin Park on Sunday 22nd November.

We're looking for people to help collect feedback from the public about park design, management and regulation so if you can help, let me know!

Tokyo Art 2

2009-08-20T20:02:00.012+08:00

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

We spent a day checking out a little of the Tokyo art scene. First we headed out to one of the old warehouse districts where several floors of a warehouse building (The Maruhachi Warehouse) have been converted into gallery spaces. If the Hong Kong government really wants to help develop the arts in Hong Kong it would be much better off allowing more of the creative re-zoning that would facilitate this kind of thing (and yes, we do have some similar projects in To Kwa Wan and Fotan already) rather than building a multi-billion dollar arts development in West Kowloon.

What young, upcoming Hong Kong artists lack is cheap, accessible performance and exhibition space, not huge white elephants. Cost: a few tins of white paint and some plaster. Of course, there’s no money in this for their mates in the property sector so it’s unlikely to happen. The West Kowloon development is, as we all know, mainly a property development with an arts theme, in much the same way that Cyberport is primarily a residential property development to line the pockets of the Li’s rather than any kind of genuine IT hub.

Next we wandered over to the Museum of Contemporary Art. This is the 'official' contemporary art museum and contained examples of all the main schools of contemporary (as opposed to modern) art. The five main categories of contemporary art being, of course:

1 - Conceptual Shite
For the conceptual artist the concept itself is the important thing, the mere representation of that concept in a visually engaging way is left to lesser mortals. Of course, we already have a medium for presenting concepts without the need for visual representation; it's called writing. However writing has three main drawbacks for the conceptual artist. Firstly, it's hard work. Secondly, it's not as cool as being an artist. Thirdly, you actually have to have a proper concept and something interesting to say about it. Conceptual art therefore, with one or two notable exceptions, tends to attract artists who have a particular combination of abilities, namely they aren't very good at art and they don't really have much of a concept.

This school of contemporary art was represented in the museum by a series of very badly taken photographs, each of which had a white object in it (a mattress, a white car, etc). The concept presumably being "Look! There are many white things in the world!" a concept that I feel was more comprehensively explored in that masterpiece of contemporary art "Spot's Big Book of Colours, Shapes and Numbers" where Spot discovers that not only are there many white things in the world but also many green, blue, yellow, round and square things. The visuals are better too.

2 - Self-indulgent Tosh
This was by far the most widely represented genre in the museum and included such gems as a photo of someone shaving off one eyebrow at the start of a train journey. The stunning insight gained being, in the words of the artist, "Some people looked at me strangely but I did make some new friends". Thanks for sharing.

Another example was a badly shot video of a man buying a squid at the market and taking it to the sea to release it.

All in all, the kind of stuff that if some kids do it and post it on You Tube it's just some kids messing about but if it's projected onto the wall of the Contemporary Art Museum it's a thought-provoking exploration of the nature of alienation. Or not.

3 - Experimental Leftovers
You know, just taking some stuff, messing around with it and seeing if something interesting comes out the process. Nothing wrong with that of course, but it's the kind of thing that artists should do in their studios and exhibit if something interesting does come out of it. Many artists didn't seem to bother with the "did anything interesting come out of the process?" question and just display it all anyway.

4 - Kitsch Cack
The kind of stuff that Jeff Koons does. Moving on...

5 - The Good Stuff
This was represented by an excellent retrospective of Kosho Ito. Ito worked in ceramics and spent his whole life working with clay and other similar substances and his work is really about the material itself and about our relationship with the natural world. Nothing more nor less than that really, he works with very simply worked or even unworked clay and yet the presentation of those works is so visually striking that it makes you look anew at something that you would normally take for granted.

The building itself is perfect for displaying work like Ito's with lots of natural light and opportunities different viewpoints and perspective of the work.

Tokyo Art 1

2009-08-11T23:18:00.002+08:00

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

Just some shots of Street Art and some of the artist's cafes and hangouts in the backstreets near Shinjuku. Not much to say about it, it's not the kind of art that tries to say much but it does provide some visual diversity in the city and there's nothing wrong with that.

That place in Tokyo

2009-08-11T22:23:00.003+08:00

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Tokyo is a pretty splendid place really, lots going on, interesting nightlife, music, art (more on that later), all the bright lights you could ask for but also plenty of quieter suburbs with a real sense of community. But if you’re ever in Tokyo and find that you’re just enjoying yourself too much and want to put a downer on the whole thing I suggest a visit to the Yasukuni Shrine in the centre of Tokyo.

This is the place that Japanese Prime Ministers occasionally visit to howls of outrage from practically every other country in the region and we wanted to see for ourselves what all the fuss was about. The shrine pays tribute to the Japanese war dead since the Meiji period and has two main parts, the shrine itself and the museum. You can go through into the shrine proper if you want to pray, but not having a burning need to pray for the souls of dead fascists we gave that bit a miss.

The museum tells the military history of the last 100 years or so from the point of view of Japan. Of course the history of wars tends to be told by the victors and it is perfectly reasonable for the Japanese to point out that the history of the Second World War (which is the most controversial part of the museum) is more complex than perhaps the Hollywood version might allow but the museum doesn’t take the perspective of saying “OK, we did some terrible things but things are more complex than just that” and instead seeks to deny that Japan did anything wrong and indeed portrays Japan entirely as the victim of aggression by others.

There are some valid points that are made in the exhibition, for example they note the fact (which has also been documented elsewhere) that during the Boxer Rebellion in China that it was widely reported how well-behaved and disciplined the Japanese troops were compared to the raping and pillaging British and American troops. The important question of course is what changed in the intervening years that led to Japanese troops committing such appalling atrocities during the Second World War, but of course the exhibition does not address this question because it completely fails to mention any Japanese wrongdoing at any time. Every single incident where Japanese are mistreated is talked about as an insufferable and unbearable wrong but those who died at the hands of the Japanese are never even mentioned.

The continual attempts to portray Japan as the victim are pretty ludicrous. Apparently, the war with China was forced on Japan by the Chinese obstinately and unreasonably refusing to welcome the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour was caused by the Americans unreasonable refusal to give the Japanese everything they wanted in pre-war negotiations and Japan’s invasion of countries in South-East Asia was forced on Japan by those other countries having resources that Japan really, really wanted (yes, they really couldn’t come up with anything better than that for that section).

The most ridiculous section is the final panel in the museum where it is stated that Japanese action in the Second World War was an inspiration to “other oppressed Asian countries” and even argues that because their experience of Japanese occupation was such a positive and inspiring one it was this that inspired them to set up their own independence movements later on. The panel then has picture of the Asian independence leaders who were supposedly inspired by Japanese militarism, including Ghandi, that well known supporter of violent fascism.

What is particularly disturbing is that this shrine is not some small entity visited by only a few far-right nutters (although a van belonging to one of the far-right parties in Japan was parked inside claiming Yasukuni to be the heart of Japan) but is a huge presence right in the heart of the most prestigious area of the city.

Tokyo Music 4

2009-08-08T17:30:00.007+08:00

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

The gig we'd planned for the third night was sold out by the time we got round to buying tickets so here's something else instead.

We went over to Harajuku to see the Cosplay kids strutting their stuff on Sunday but as it was raining (and also apparently because there was a Cosplay convention in another part of Tokyo that day) there weren't many Cosplay kids around. However there were large numbers of people heading off across the bridge to something so we followed them to see what it was.

They were on their way to a stadium nearby to buy tickets for a concert by Exile and they were filling the car park, queuing for tickets, making banners etc. Apparently Exile are a popular boy band in Japan. Normally boy bands are artificially constructed things, with five young lads carefully selected to appeal to different female demographics rather than for their musical ability. Judging by the pictures on the side of the tour van Exile have taken this marketing concept to it's logical conclusion and there are fourteen singers in Exile (it's practically a choir ferchrissakes). Presumably this means that they can include somebody to cater for every conceivable female demographic - rather than just the stock five boy band character types (the cute one, the sensitive one, the bit of rough etc.) they can fill in the gaps and include some of the less popular ones to make sure they don't miss any market segment (the slightly creepy one, the middle-aged one, the one who really wanted to be an accountant, perhaps).

A quick google suggests that their strategy has been successful - Exile had three of the top ten selling albums in Japan last year and also we saw many Exile T-shirt wearing ladies around Tokyo, from schoolgirls to grandmothers.

Also included in the photos above are some of the few cosplay kids about that day and some general snaps of Tokyo street fashion in Harajuku.

Tokyo Music 3

2009-08-08T13:25:00.010+08:00

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

When we looked at the listings it happened that a Japanese artist I knew of was playing at the Pit Inn whilst we were in Tokyo. His name is Otomo Yoshihide and back in the days when I was living in the UK he was well-known on the avant-garde/free improv scene. At that time he was doing a lot of CD cut-up sound collage stuff and although his stuff was experimental and so not always successful it was, at least, always interesting. So when I saw he had organised some gigs in Tokyo whilst we were there I thought that if the 'shot in the dark' gigs didn't prove to be that great at least this was pretty much guaranteed to be interesting. Of course, as is the nature of these things, it didn't really work out that way.

Otomo talked on the website about how he had become interested in experimenting with the use of space in recent performance (having the performers positioned around the audience, amongst the audience, in a separate space etc) but when we arrived at the Pit Inn in Shinjuku the audience was seated in rows behind desks, mainly I guess to maximise the space utilisation in the small venue, but I'm not sure if it felt more like a primary school classroom or perhaps a church with pews. Probably the church metaphor works better as the 'congregation' seemed a pretty dedicated bunch.

The first set was a Zen-like sound poem kind of a thing with a combination of traditional instruments (although unconventionally played) as well as piano, marimba, electronics and some particularly listless percussion. I don't know about you but personally there's only so much Zen tranquility I can take in one sitting before I feel the need to balance my yin/yang by giving someone a clip round the ear but I was happy to see that as a psychological failing on my part and wait for the next exciting installment.

The next set, unfortunately, was even worse. Totally predictable straight-ahead hotel lobby jazz with some superficial 'avant-garde' elements such as pre-recorded sounds and abrupt finishes to tunes that seemed completely tacked-on rather than part of the musical dialogue. The band was led by the pianist from the previous set, playing her compositions of advertising-jingle melodies accompanied by her own vocal witterings. She was joined by a bass player, guitarist and drummer. At one point the guitarist briefly cut loose for about a minute or so and it was clear that he could really play and for a moment I thought that the whole thing had been an elaborate joke and now we were going to hear the real shit but after his brief foray into the world of the living it was back to the plodding jingle-jangle of before, under the watchful eye of the ~~schoolmarm~~ band leader.

After some discussion we decided to stay for the third set, surely things could only get better? Oh no. They could get even worse. The same quartet came out but this time accompanied by Otomo, the listless marimba and electronics players from the first set and, joy of joys, that old chestnut, a vocalist who can't sing for shit. My, how we laughed.

Otomo, Otomo, what the feck happened to you Otomo?

Tokyo Music 2

2009-08-07T13:31:00.002+08:00

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

The last band up were the guys pictured above. To be honest I don't know who they are as everything was a bit chaotic and in Japanese so if there are any Tokyo music scene aficionados out there, feel free to let me know. Musically, if you can imagine a kind of punked up Yeah Yeah Yeahs with a jazz trumpeter, a hippy chick on guitar and a lead singer overly fond of crotch-grabbing and suggestive finger mimes you'll be somewhere in the area. All in all a pretty lively set though which got everybody up and moving.

Overall an interesting first evening in Tokyo.

Tokyo Music 1

2009-08-06T22:53:00.004+08:00

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

Just got back from a long weekend in Tokyo. It was our first time in Tokyo but we wanted to check out the music scene there so we picked three gigs from the listings during the four days we were there and headed out.

First up was a gig at Heaven's Door in Sangenjaya. There were several bands on the bill but the headliners were Ed Woods, billed as a shock rock band. We arrived a bit late having navigated the Tokyo metro and having stopped for some culinary experiences on the way and came in to the small club halfway through the Ed Woods set. The music was pretty intense power trio stuff, with just guitar, amped up acoustic double bass and drums. The music was pretty wild but we wondered what the 'shock' rock element was.

Towards the end of the set the bass player decided to take his troosers off before getting down on the floor behind his double bass for a while (presumably he was doing a Hendrix and playing it with his teeth but it's hard to say). Upon emerging, smeared with blood, he then proceeded to douse himself in liquid from a water bottle. At this point, the thought flashes through your mind "Just how shocking is this shock rock thing? Has he worked himself up into such a frenzy that he's doused himself in lighter fluid and is about to set himself on fire? And, by the way, where are the fire exits?"

Fortunately the next thing to emerge from his bag was not a lighter but some soap and he started to lather himself up. He then performed a unique - in my experience anyway - variation on stage diving where instead of leaping into the welcoming arms of the crowd he instead asked the crowd to part and dived, face first, onto the concrete floor, careening across it like ...... well, like a soaped-up Japanese double bass player in his underpants careening across a concrete floor.

I'm not sure what it all meant but you've gotta appreciate a guy who's prepared to put in a bit of effort to get the crowd going.

More Tokyo music and other random stuff to follow......

7 million Hong Kongers to be jailed

2009-06-18T09:39:00.003+08:00

From the SCMP today:

The 53-year-old man, surnamed Ching, was arrested for "contempt of Legco".

We're all going to jail.

June 4 (part 3)

2009-06-10T14:38:00.004+08:00

Final bit of June 4 stuff:

Cally sent me this video and asked me to share it:

"hi friends, here is a canton pop song about 8964 with English subtitle, just want to let the world know more about it. And, we, Hong Kong people never forget this bloody incident and still asking for chinese government to put it into offical record and face the history. pls forward it to your oversea friends."

June 4 (part 2)

2009-06-05T08:57:00.009+08:00

We went to Victoria park for the June 4th vigil last night and it was absolutely packed. I'm sure there will be the normal debates about the numbers (150,000 was the figure being talked about at the park) but regardless of what estimate is made of the number the fact is that Victoria Park was full. There were, quite simply, as many people at the park as you can fit in Victoria Park.

For those of you who know Victoria Park, that means that all the football pitches from the Tin Hau end to the Causeway Bay end were completely packed with people and also the grass areas beyond the pitches. And not just people spread out over those areas but really full, with people climbing up on walls around the entrance just to get a chance to see something and people arriving and giving up because they couldn't get past the entrance.

Encouragingly, there were also many young people there. Of course Donald Tsang's remarks about June 4th in Legco last month helped to motivate people to go and Hong Kong demonstrated as clearly as it is possible to do that they rejected completely the idea that Tsang's view of June 4th "represents the opinion of Hong Kong people in general."

Of course, this being Hong Kong, at the end of the demonstration they turned on the floodlights and people scraped up the candle wax from the football pitches, tidied up and went quietly and peacefully home. Makes me proud to be part of this wonderful city.

[I'll post a few rough and ready photos later; the SCMP photographer got the aerial shot that gives you a good idea of what it was like here and SCMP video footage is here.]

June 4

2009-05-29T11:23:00.005+08:00

As June 4 gets closer the usual apologists for the CCP are out and about. Thanks to Hemlock for highlighting this quote from Basic Law Committee member Lau Nai-keung.

“All objective evidence suggests that students dispersed peacefully from the square that night,” he said, citing remarks by hunger strikers Zhou Duo, Hu Dejian and Liu Xiaobo after the incident.

“Nowadays, many Hong Kong people still believe tanks crushed students in the square to death … if the army really did this, it would be a true massacre and would not be forgivable. But it is not what happened that night,” he said, adding that he would not call June 4 a “massacre”, and called on people to view the incident objectively.

Note the careful choice of wording here because what he says is in some respects true but is nevertheless a complete distortion of reality. Western press coverage of the massacre helps the CCP to trot out this line because the press simplified the story, choosing to focus on the ‘brave students massacred in Tiananmen Square’.

When Lau Nai-keung says that objective evidence suggests that students dispersed peacefully from the square when the tanks finally fought their way to the square he is probably correct. The evidence suggests that students, understandably, chose to go home when faced with the reality of being killed. Where he completely distorts reality is by using the CCP strategy of defining the massacre as ‘killing students in the square’ and therefore arguing that the massacre did not happen because students weren’t killed in the square. His mealy-mouthed explanation conveniently neglects to mention that objective evidence also clearly shows that many, many people were killed in the streets around the square, mostly workers trying to protect the students by stopping the tanks from reaching the square.

You’ve got to wonder how the quisling little shit sleeps at night.

Singapore

2009-04-26T20:01:00.005+08:00

We went to Singapore for a couple of days at Easter. As it happened the hotel we wanted wasn't available and we ended up at the Carlton, which is right next to the new Singapore Management University. This was of interest only because a few years ago me and a classmate, Connie Chu, won a competition to design an art installation for the SMU Library which was funded by Li Ka Shing.

We were originally set the competition brief as an assignment for a typography course and after we had completed it we thought we might as well submit it to the competition as we had already done the work anyway, and we won.

The original design was a large-scale interactive installation (the competition theme was 'Knowledge Reshapes Destiny') where people walking onto the space generated ripples of knowledge in the form of quotations which floated down to reshape the cityscape. The design was technically ambitious and would have been expensive to implement so it was no surprise that when we met the representative of the competition organisers (a well-known HK artist) he said that they liked our design but wanted to explore some alternative ways to implement it. Weirdly, he suggested a mosaic, which is perhaps the dumbest way to implement an interactive installation you could imagine.

Anyway, we went away and spent a lot of time researching other ways to implement the installation that overcame the technical challenges and were low maintenance but retained the interactive element. Most of them were cheaper than installing a mosaic. At our next meeting Mr W asked straight away to see 'the mosaic'. It became clear that the decision had already been taken that the installation would be a mosaic and he wasn't at all interested in the other designs so we rattled off a mosaic design and hoped that we would be able to meet the real decision makers at the site visit we had been promised and change their minds. Of course the site visit never materialised, we never met the organ-grinder, and after some time the installation size and location was also changed at which point I lost interest in the whole thing and pretty much forgot about it.

So when I ended up in a hotel next to the SMU I thought I'd wander over and have a look. Four things struck me about the completed installation:

1) Yes, it's a freakin' mosaic.

2) I guess you could get some limited sense of the original intention of the piece if you step onto the 'ripples' but of course they have put pot plants at either end of the mosaic to discourage even that limited 'interaction'.

3) They have, of course, changed many of the quotes we had originally suggested (in fact, we had originally suggested that there be an input terminal so that students using the library could input their own quotes but we knew that was never going to fly in Singapore). The quotes were from famous thinkers and philosophers but only three thinkers were deemed to be sufficiently important as to warrant more than one quotation, the great thinkers Aristotle, Einstein and ...err, Li Ka Shing, sponsor of the library.

4) The mosaic is pleasant enough but could have been done by any interior designer; why did they bother inviting people to create artwork if that's all they wanted? They could have saved everybody a lot of wasted time by just asking an interior designer to make a mosaic for them in the first place.

HK-Live

2009-04-14T21:16:00.007+08:00

C went to China for an exchange trip so me and the missus took the opportunity to make one of our periodic attempts to recapture our youth and went to HK Live at the Fringe Club. There are usually three bands at a HK Live gig and of course you can usually count yourself lucky if one of them is any good but I have to say that this time it was a pretty solid event with three contrasting but excellent bands; Poubelle International, local band The Lovesong and The Bigger Bang from Beijing.

Poubelle were a good contrast with the more serious Lovesong, playing a tight, relatively lighthearted set of short, crisp songs. Lovesong were excellent and more intense and serious. Although I couldn't make out what he was singing (you know what these young people are like) the lead singer was clearly concerned about something and it was good that he got it off his chest. Gratuitous sarcasm aside, they were great. Last up was the Beijing band The Bigger Bang. Somewhat charmingly, the young lady on vocals was so nervous about her first appearance in Hong Kong that she had gotten completely pissed before coming on stage (don't Beijingers know that nowadays we're the ones who are scared of them?). Anyway, they took a little time to get going but by the end had got into their stride and even managed to get the crowd sufficiently excited to get a bit of what I believe the young people call a 'moshpit' going, led by the young lads from local band Inisfallen if I'm not mistaken.

Yes, we have no cojones

2009-03-27T11:06:00.004+08:00

This quote is from our ~~President~~ top business tycoon, Li Ka Shing, in today’s SCMP:

"Hong Kong needs to be strong," he said. "Don't waste energy on unconstructive things for Hong Kong. For Hong Kong, the most important thing is that we have the support of our mother country. The individual visit scheme from the mainland has contributed greatly to Hong Kong. Whatever our country can do for us, they have done so."

“Unconstructive things” here of course being shorthand for troublesome ideas like democracy, anti-cartel legislation and anything else that might stop Ah Shing and his mates stitching up Hong Kong for their own benefit which is then followed by the usual brown-nosing towards Beijing.

I’ve never been able to understand the mentality of shameless brown-nosers like Li Ka Shing, Alan Zeman etc. I have no problem with the fact that they’ve made a bob or two, fair enough. I also understand that they might have been tempted to do a bit of brown-nosing in order to get business deals early on when they were starting out (unseemly though that is). What I don’t understand is how there doesn’t come a day when they say to themselves, “I’m doing OK. I’ve got $x billion in the bank, my family is provided for, I’ve got more money than I can ever spend, surely I don’t need to publicly shame myself with incessant toadying anymore, it’s time for me to be a man! And if I don’t get the next backhander construction project from Beijing, fuck ‘em, I can afford it!”

But no, however many billions they amass they keep on sucking up to the powers that be, slagging off democracy and publicly disgracing themselves so they can have a few billions more. What is that about? What is the point of having all those billions of dollars if you still can’t even afford to buy yourself a pair of balls?

Advertising

2009-03-21T16:48:00.014+08:00

A year or two ago I had to knock up a quick TV commercial as part of a media course I was doing and the TVC below for a book retailer was the result.

Walked into Dymocks the other day and this was playing on their in-store TV, pretty much the identical concept.

Either a case of great minds think alike or small ones never differ I guess.

The Trouble with Bob

2009-01-28T19:26:00.012+08:00

I've been listening to well-regarded musicians whom I've never really been into and trying to listen to them with fresh ears so I've listened to some of Bob Dylan's stuff recently, in particular the albums The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde. Whilst there are undoubtedly some great songs (see music player below) I find it really difficult to listen to more than one or two Dylan tracks in a row. This is not so much because of the voice, but because of his phrasing. He has this annoying vocal mannerism of stretching out one word in a line (usually the second last or last word). Whilst this is fine for a single song; repeated song after song as it is on an album like Blonde on Blonde (regarded by many as Dylan's greatest album) it quickly becomes tedious in the extreme. Try as I might I just can't get past being fundamentally annoyed by Bob.

Chomsky & Foucault

2009-01-28T12:22:00.004+08:00

I read 'The Chomsky-Foucault Debate on Human Nature' several months ago and meant to post something about it but never got round to it, so I'm probably a bit hazy on the details by now, but the idea is the same.

The main section of the book is basically the transcript of a discussion between the intellectuals (for want of a better word) Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault, followed by some further related articles and interviews. Chomsky and Foucault have some superficial similarities, they are both intellectuals of the left who seek to engage in politics, but the discussion in fact shows how fundamentally different they are in important respects.

The debate starts with their respective backgrounds in linguistics. I'm no linguistics expert but Chomsky's view, extremely simplistically, is that people have innate language abilities. Foucault on the other hand is from the French Structuralist tradition which prefers to see language as a structure which limits and determines the thought of individuals rather than something that individuals use creatively to express their ideas. Structuralism is in this sense the philosophical grandparent of the PC movement. This leads into their views on human nature, with Chomsky believing that people have innate creativity and Foucault sticking with his structuralist framework. Whilst the discussion remains about linguistics and human nature the differences seem primarily to be about technical intricacies but as soon as the discussion moves onto politics the discussion becomes more heated as the implications of these philosophical differences become clear.

The political differences can be shown clearly in this exchange.....

FOUCAULT: But I would merely like to reply to your first sentence, in which you said that if you didn't consider the war you make against the police to be just, you wouldn't make it.

I would like to reply to you in terms of Spinoza and say that the proletariat doesn't wage war against the ruling class because it considers such a war to be just. The proletariat makes war with the ruling class because, for the first time in history, it wants to take power. And because it will overthrow the power of the ruling class, it considers such a war to be just.

CHOMSKY: Yeah, I don't agree.

FOUCAULT: One makes war to win, not because it is just.

CHOMSKY: I don't, personally, agree with that.

For example, if I could convince myself that attainment of power by the proletariat would lead to a terrorist police state, in which freedom and dignity and decent human relations would be destroyed, then I wouldn't want the proletariat to take power. In fact the only reason for wanting any such thing, I believe, is because one thinks, rightly or wrongly, that some fundamental human values will be achieved by that transfer of power.

FOUCAULT: When the proletariat takes power, it may be quite possible that the proletariat will exert towards the classes over which it has triumphed, a violent, dictatorial, and even bloody power. I can't see what objection one could make to this.

For all Chomsky's faults, and they are many, he starts from a fundamental position of valuing the human individual. For Chomsky, unlike Foucault, individuals have an intrinsic value, they are not just blank pieces of paper to be shuffled, re-arranged and re-written in a structuralist re-arrangement of society, not to be valued or despised purely because of their position within a theoretical social framework.

Although the book is subtitled On Human Nature I think it is a recognition of human value rather than a particular view of human nature that is important. Indeed, a rigid view of human nature, and an attempt to re-shape human society and the individuals within that society to conform to it, can be one of the more dangerous political positions, whether it is Hitler's view that some people were naturally masters and some naturally slaves and we'd all be much happier if we just accepted this, or the Marxist closed society where individuals can be free and happy only if they conform to a constrained view of human nature.

It is the valuing of the human individual that, for me, is of fundamental political importance, rather than the old-fashioned differentiation between right and left. Connections can be made with people who have innate respect for individuals wherever they may be on the political spectrum. Avoid the people-haters, on the other hand, at all costs, whether they be of the left or right.

The Dog

2009-01-24T22:26:00.005+08:00

It's always a sign that a blog is going downhill when the writer starts posting photos of their pets, but there you go.

For years my daughter pestered me to get a dog but I always refused - our flat is too small, it's too much trouble etc. - but a couple of years ago I finally relented. I have to say that now there are few things more pleasant than taking the dog for a walk up Mount Parker on a Sunday morning. When I don't have time to go up the hill I now take the dog to the new dog adventure playground kindly provided by Swire outside their new office block development in Tai Koo Shing, complete with open strips of grass and swimming facilities.

Of course, dogs are not actually allowed there as the facilities are just for looking at but we usually get about 20 minutes of entertainment for both the dog and passers-by before we get kicked out, and with a cheery 'See you tomorrow!' to the security guard, we're off home.

Astronauts, Judges and Feckwits

2008-12-06T22:23:00.009+08:00

Wasn't in the best of moods today and then made the mistake of having a look at the front page of the South China Morning Post which was a veritable smorgasbord of feckwittery.

First up was the main headline "Astronauts confident HK can weather financial turmoil". Hard to know what aspect of this headline is worse. Is it the fact that the CCP sees fit to insult our intelligence with the kind of 'patriotic education' that the astronauts' visit represents (patriotism of course meaning for the CCP our continued acceptance of the rule of a bunch of corrupt fascists rather than the more common meaning of love of one's country)? Or is it the idea that we are taking economic advice from freakin' astronauts? Or is it rather that the SCMP is so far up the CCP's arse as to go along with the idea that this kind of PR bullshit represents some kind of news story?

Next to the astronaut story was the story about your friend and ours, Judge Pang, chairman of the Electoral Affairs Committee and also chair of the Advisory Committee on Protecting Institutionalised Corruption (or the Advisory Committee on Post-service Employment of Civil Servants to give its official title) recently in the news for approving the former housing director's application to work for a property developer he had made some rather unusual arrangements with. This time he made a ruling in favour of overturning a magistrate's conviction against a manufacturer for operating unsafe machinery and then forgot what he had ruled in his written summing up and argued for the opposite. The key sentence in the article was "It said no action would be taken against Mr. Justice Pang." We're surrounded by feckwits I tell you.

Under the article sharing the sage words of the rocket-driving economists was an article praising the fact that Beijing was moving towards a free market because it was using a slightly different system of price-fixing for fuel.

Finally, the page was completed with an advertisement for a freakin' watch with the tagline "Introducing the first talking watch from IWC: it says everything about its owner." Now don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against people buying nice things but the idea that buying an expensive watch says anything about a person other than "I've just bought an expensive watch" requires a particularly shallow and simple-minded kind of feckwittery. So if you wish to purchase a watch that says "I'm a stupid feckwit" IWC would seem to be the brand for you.

Here endeth today's rant, I feel much better now.

Stevie Wonder

2008-11-16T21:42:00.009+08:00

I've been on a bit of a music binge recently and have been exploring some musicians that I've never really been into and trying come to them with fresh ears. First up was Stevie Wonder. I've been listening an album of his early stuff and three of what are widely regarded as his 'classic period' albums; Music of My Mind, Talking Book and the double album Songs in the Key of Life. His upbeat, positive stuff is great. He can take something as seemingly cheesy as a paean to his new-born child -Isn't She Lovely- and make it work where for anybody else it would collapse under the weight of it's own schmaltz. Other songs like I Love Every Little Thing Thing About You and Sir Duke are similarly upbeat and effective. And of course he can do proto P-funk stuff like Keep On Running with his eyes closed (so to speak). Where it all goes a bit pear-shaped is when he tries to 'educate' us and it all gets a bit pompous and bogged down in tracks like Love's In Need Of Love Today, where Stevie reveals that he has discovered that love is a good thing and is really much better than evil, which I'm sure comes as a revelation to us all..

City Speak IV

2008-09-28T21:42:00.006+08:00

I went to the forum City Speak IV the other day and gave a bit of spiel about Freedom Ball which seemed to go OK. The forum was organised by Paul Zimmerman at Designing Hong Kong and was particularly interesting as they managed to get a diverse range of speakers discussing issues around the regulation of public space, including representatives from the government, hawkers, market traders, academics, activists and street performers. Part of the reason for the forum was the upcoming review of hawker licensing by the government.

One of the things that struck me about the debate was the number of times that the discussion started to revolve around whether we should support or discourage different 'kinds of people' (hawkers, street performers, etc) rather than direct discussion of the issues and problems that might or might not need regulating. This was particularly true of the government discussion paper which talks about the types of problems that hawkers (and particular types of hawker) tend to cause, with the resulting recommendation that licenses be granted/phased out for this type of hawker.

Personally I feel that when we do need to regulate then the regulation should be as minimal as necessary to get the job done and should directly address the issue rather than dealing with generalised groups. For example, the government feels that hawkers tend to create hygiene problems and uses this as a reason not to issue hawker licenses in general. If hygiene is an issue then it would, in my opinion, be better to draft legislation that directly addresses hygiene and apply this to everybody equally whether hawkers, restaurants or five-star hotels.

Another issue, which I've posted about before, was the contradictory way the Hong Kong government expects people to take responsibility for themselves rather than relying on government handouts and a welfare state in the economic sphere and yet regulates them to death in other areas.

Room Full of Mirrors

2008-09-28T17:12:00.008+08:00

I've been reading Charles R Cross's biography of Jimi Hendrix; Room Full Of Mirrors. As a biography it's OK, it's pretty detailed and does what it needs to do. As you read it you realise just how short Hendrix's career was. Hendrix released his first album (Are You Experienced) in 1967, two more studio albums (Axis: Bold As Love and Electric Ladyland) in 1967 and 1968 respectively and it was all over on 18th September 1970.

Are You Experienced? was no.2 in the UK charts that year (the year I was born). It was only topped by Sergeant Pepper, regarded by many as the greatest pop album ever, so I picked up a copy of it. Quite frankly, it's a bit cack really. I mean, there are some nice jingly-jangly little compositions and all, but nothing of the power and emotional impact of other great pop artists recording during that era like Hendrix, Marvin Gaye etc. Then again I've never really understood what the appeal of The Beatles was, all their stuff is pleasant enough and there's a lot of it but there's nothing that really grabs you by the balls.

Reclaiming the streets

2008-08-18T22:56:00.004+08:00

I went up to Sham Shui Po to visit Cally and her friends doing their letter writing project the other Sunday. They write letters and draw for people to help reclaim public space for non-commercial use and to give people in the community a chance to communicate and have their stories heard. Their project touches people in a way that is deeper and more personal than many social activist projects.

Cally also suggested I have a look at a community-based exhibition in an abandoned building in Sham Shui Po whilst I was there. The exhibition was organised by, for and in the community. There was lots of information about individual people and families in the neighbourhood but one of the common themes that stood out for me was the way that the government often just negatively impacted on peoples' lives and livelihoods. People who weren't asking for help but who were struggling to look after themselves and their families had the rug pulled from under them by government officers obsessed with 'tidying things up'. From changes to hawking regulations, refusing new licences for dai pai dongs etc the government on the one hand says that people should look after themselves, which to some extent is fair enough, whilst at the same time taking away the means for the poorest to do so. At the same time of course it uses large amounts of public funds to subsidise and 'support' its friends in big business and in particular the large property developers.

One example of this spiteful approach to the poor is the story of a man who had previously lost his job and home. He ended up on the streets but he managed to construct a small plywood box to live in in a backstreet. Government officers came in and destroyed it whilst he was at work, took his few belongings including octopus card etc, left no contact details so that he could reclaim his possessions and offered no assistance in finding alternative housing. A purely negative impact on a struggling person's life. If they can't or won't do anything constructive they should at least leave people the hell alone to get on with their lives.

More balls

2008-08-02T14:12:00.001+08:00

The SCMP have said that they will run an article about the Freedom Ball project in the Sunday paper tomorrow so pick up a copy!

Freedom Ball

2008-07-18T23:50:00.004+08:00

Just a quick link to the Freedom Ball project I've been working on recently. If you want to get involved in challenging the rules that Hong Kong parks and other public spaces let me know!

Freedom Ball

Quotes for Mr. Evil

2008-06-27T13:21:00.004+08:00

I've been reading Orwell's 'The Road to Wigan Pier'. Orwell was a committed Socialist and social activist who always tried to look at the real conditions and concerns of working people and who was always prepared to cut through the bullshit spouted by many who claimed to share his concern for the conditions of the working class. This made him something of a pariah with much of the left, of course. I thought these quotes might be of particular interest to a certain Mr. Evil of Discovery Bay.

"Sometimes I look at a Socialist--the intellectual, tract-writing type of Socialist, with his pullover, his fuzzy hair, and his Marxian quotation--and wonder what the devil his motive really is. It is often difficult to believe that it is a love of anybody, especially of the working class, from whom he is of all people the furthest removed. The underlying motive of many Socialists, I believe, is simply a hypertrophied sense of order. The present state of affairs offends them not because it causes misery, still less because it makes freedom impossible, but because it is untidy; what they desire, basically, is to reduce the world to something resembling a chessboard."

...and...

""The truth is that, to many people calling themselves Socialists,revolution does not mean a movement of the masses with which they hope to associate themselves; it means a set of reforms which 'we', the clever ones, are going to impose upon 'them', the Lower Orders."

National Identity

2008-06-07T17:20:00.002+08:00

I've been reading John King Fairbank's China, A New History recently and one of the key ideas he expresses is the importance of the Chinese concepts of 'wen' and 'wu' in Chinese history. Wen is culture and moral civility and wu is military power. Under the influence of scholars and bureaucrats Chinese culture has typically valued wen much more than wu; indeed for an emperor to employ military might has traditionally meant that he has failed in his moral and ethical duties, causing him to fall back on power rather than culture. That said, military power was needed to consolidate the empire and unify China and Fairbank argues that this was usually supplied from outside China as China did not value or cultivate military power. He argues that the new dynasties that often provided a fresh injection of wu into a society that had become stagnant were often the 'barbarians' on China's borders. Although they provided the military power necessary to re-unify China and impose a new regime the essentially foreign dynasties were soon absorbed into the Chinese cultural system.

In some cases these were obviously foreign powers such as the Yuan (Mongolians) and the Qing (Manchurians) but Fairbank goes further in arguing that many dynasty founders, even of dynasties such as the Tang, were actually barbarian leaders who had married into Chinese society. To some extent this obviously undercuts the element of Chinese national identity that thinks of China as an essentially self-contained 5000 year-old culture.

Of course, this is nothing unusual about this. All nations inevitably contain this intermixing of cultures, ideas and leaders. Many English people would regard England as, until recently, a fairly self-contained island culture, but of course we have been invaded many times. To name a few examples we have been invaded by the Celts, the Romans, the Vikings, the Saxons, the Normans and more debatably (and recently) by the Dutch.

The Dutch invaded in 1688, the army of William of Orange taking London and imposing Dutch rule on England. We like to tell ourselves that it wasn't really an invasion, however, as William was invited to invade in a letter written by six noblemen and a bishop, basically on the premise that they would rather a foreign Protestant king than the Catholic James II. William was followed by Queen Anne and upon her death rule passed to King George, a minor member of the Hanoverian royal family, thus starting the unbroken rule of Britain by German royal families, the House of Hanover being followed the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (or the Windsors as they prefer to be known nowadays as it sounds more British).

Whilst it's fine to admit that we have been invaded many times, it happens to every nation after all, one misunderstanding should be cleared up. Some people have the crazy idea that we were invaded by the French in 1066. In fact the Normans were Vikings (Norman literally meaning North Man) who had invaded and settled in a part of what is now France. After some time they then went on to invade England, another of the Viking invasions of Britain. Admitting that we have been invaded many times and ruled by the Germans for centuries is one thing but accepting that we've been invaded by the French is just too much.

Young at heart or juvenile twat?

2008-06-04T12:32:00.005+08:00

Much to the chagrin of my long-suffering darling wife, I have been playing a lot of Team Fortress 2 recently. Women generally find it hard to understand that however old we get we never get too old for juvenile activities such as computer games. Team Fortress 2 is a particularly splendid game though, it has just the right mix of simplicity and err... tactical sophistication, plus it has a built in voice facility so you can plug in a mike and hurl abuse at people whilst killing them with your flamethrower. How could anyone possibly not enjoy that?

Soft Pawn

2008-06-04T09:55:00.006+08:00

Went to new bar The Pawn in Wan Chai for an after-work drink with the missus. In some ways it's very pleasant; who can argue with a nice old building with balconies overlooking the street, nicely tarted up and a bit of ska and rocksteady on the sound system on a Friday night?

The problem of course is that they have chosen to charge ridiculous Lan Kwai Fong prices, part of the increasing poncification of Wan Chai spreading down from the benighted Star Street area like a particularly virulent virus. Working class culture has been turned into a theme pub for yuppies (or whatever they're called nowadays) it seems.

Halve the price of the beer and park a kebab van outside and it would be the place to go.

Hong Kong Film

2008-05-17T12:37:00.012+08:00

Times have been interesting in Hong Kong cinema in the last few years, with something of a revival from the doldrums experienced after the Hong Kong action style and personnel were absorbed by Hollywood. Pretty much every Hollywood action film nowadays incorporates the Hong Kong action aesthetic, from Matrix to Casino Royale via Charlies' Angels although with much bigger budgets and Hong Kong film has been struggling to find a new identity, led by the prolific Johnnie To. At the start of 2007 we had had a couple of years of pretty strong offerings from some of the more interesting directors in Hong Kong. To in particular produced some of his strongest work in the Election films, particularly Election 2 whilst still showing he can still do stylised action in his own way with films like Exiled. Pang Ho Cheung also made probably his best film to date in Isabella, bringing elements of his film making and scriptwriting to a cohesive whole at last. Together with newer directors making interesting films like My Mother is a Belly Dancer as part of the Focus: First Cuts film development programme for young directors, things were looking good.

That's why the last year has been a such a disappointment. Johnnie To seems to have gone off the boil with the weak Mad Detective, Pang disappointed with the stylishly shot but otherwise limp Exodus and I find it hard to think of a Hong Kong film that has impressed in the past year or so. Here's hoping things get back on track in 2008.

Crossing the road

2008-05-11T10:42:00.004+08:00

I was out at Tsing Yi yesterday on a school visit. We lived on Tsing Yi for a few years, first in a flat and then in a village house in Tai Wong Ha Tsuen. I was teaching then, finishing work at 4.00pm and walking home to practice my saxophone or read a book on the rooftop. Those were the days. The sax is now gathering dust on the top of the wardrobe.

Anyway, as I left the god awful shopping centre, Maritime Square, to cross to the park I noticed the huge, unsightly pedestrian bridge that was built to connect the park to the shopping centre. The bridge is massive, concrete and ugly with stairs, a massive ramp, a lift etc just to enable people to cross the road. It was built when I was living in Tsing Yi and after it was built everybody avoided using it, preferring to just cross the road normally as grown up people are able to. Of course the bureaucrats were not happy with people using their own initiative so they tried to force people to use their pointless bridge by planting bushes either side of the road to block access. People just walked through the bushes, gradually creating a path. Next came a wooden fence, in which a gap soon appeared to enable people to walk through. As the battle escalated the wooden fence was replaced with the unsightly metal railings that you see everywhere. Of course some people still hopped over it, but it forced many to use the bridge.

Yesterday, as I left the shopping mall I noticed that the metal railing had been opened up and a simple crossing had been created, with the pavement sloped for wheelchair access etc, a few yards from the bridge, so that people could cross the road at street level. Almost everybody was crossing here rather than using the stupid bridge. Nice to see a small victory for common sense and these crossings have been appearing more recently. Opposite Wan Chai Police Station, where I get off the bus to the office, another has appeared, giving people a sensible option to get to where they want to go rather than being herded across a single crossing point as before. Is that a sign that someone with a bit of common sense has started working in the Government Urban Planning Office? We live in hope.

Cheese fondue and the fear of freedom

2008-03-29T11:05:00.015+08:00

I've been living in Hong Kong for many years and until recently had never used any of the 'expatriate' forums. To be honest I've never really known what an expatriate is. I'm a bloke, originally from the UK, who lives in Hong Kong. Does that make me an expatriate, an immigrant, a resident? Who knows? Some people seem to have a very clear idea about these things, however.

Anyway, I occasionally post on forums such as Asiaxpat where I have to admit that I get an unseemly amount of childish pleasure from continually getting banned for any number of increasingly absurd infringements of the sites posting regulations. This particular site is well-known for being run by a little Nazi chap (I don't really know if he's little but I always imagine such people sitting behind their desk in a Napoleon costume) who likes to ban people for such thought crimes as 'being a bit sarcastic'.

Recently, for example, I was banned for posting unacceptable opinions about cheese fondue, an achievement of which I am perhaps unduly proud. Somebody asked for recommendations for cheese fondue restaurants so that they could compile a list of said restaurants (this is what passes for entertainment around these parts). Several people posted suggestions of restaurants where they had enjoyed the aforementioned melted cheese delicacy, at which point I lumbered in with my unseemly and offensive opinions about cheese fondue. I pointed out that, historically, the purpose of cheese fondue was as a way to use up stale bread and cheese that had become hard and inedible during the course of the cold European winter. As we now possess refrigerators this was no longer necessary so perhaps the posters might consider simply purchasing some nice cheese and eating it, thereby negating the need for a fondue. I was of course immediately banned for the statutory 7 days for posting such a scurrilous and offensive suggestion.

What is interesting about this is not the fact that there is a little man somewhere who likes to exercise the little bit of power he has managed to gain by banning people from his website. This is, I'm sure, quite common and is similar to the officious bureaucrat, traffic warden, security guard etc. What was more interesting was that the banning came at the request of the person who started the thread who demanded that I be banned for suggesting that she might like to try unmelted cheese. This small piece of psychology interests me.

What goes through peoples' minds when they choose the solution of requesting that people be banned or censored for expressing opinions that they disagree with, even about something as insignificant as melted cheese? There are of course many perfectly reasonable responses she might have made to my point. She could have said that she didn't care what the historical purpose of cheese fondue was, that she enjoyed the taste and was going to continue eating it regardless, for example. A position for which I would, of course, have the utmost respect. Instead she decided that she needed to appeal to the leader to protect her from exposure to unsettling anti-fondue opinions.

I realise that I am in danger of making rather a meal (ha ha) of a cheese fondue incident but it reminded me of reading Eric Fromm's the Fear of Freedom, where he explores the psychological reasons that people end up submitting themselves voluntarily to fascist or other authoritarian regimes. Fromm is right to feel that the interesting thing is not the psychology of the leader in these circumstances, who has some fairly obviously explainable motivations, or of his opponents, but the psychology of people who voluntarily choose to submit themselves to his rule.

So next time you see someone asking for you to be banned from a forum for upsetting their notions about cheese fondue, beware. It's the thin end of a wedge that leads to totalitarian dictatorship I tell you.

Anybody fancy some cheese?

Different but the same

2008-03-03T18:23:00.008+08:00

I have been reading a couple of books recently which deal with Twentieth Century history from very different writers. The first was re-reading Paul Johnson’s Modern Times, covering the period from the end of the First World War to the nineties. The second was Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine, not a history as such but a book that covers a range of post-war events in support of her shock doctrine theory.

On the surface you couldn’t imagine two more different writers. Johnson is a conservative, Catholic writer, closely associated with and supportive of Margaret Thatcher and her free-market reforms in the 1980s. Klein, on the other hand, is the darling of the anti-globalisation movement and is very critical of the free market and globalisation. What struck me, however, were the similarities rather than the differences between the two books.

In Johnson’s book there are some main threads that he picks up in his history of the twentieth century. He lays the blame for many of the problems and tragedies of the twentieth century firmly at the door of the tendency in this century towards utopian solutions to society’s problems. He argues strongly that the arrogance that makes people feel that they know how the ideal society should be organized, and the conviction that revolutionary change is therefore necessary to achieve this utopian dream, leads inevitably to moral relativism, totalitarianism and corruption. The idea that they are working towards some utopian future leads to the justification of atrocities in the here and now in order to achieve them. The examples he gives are those that you would expect; Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot etc. He is conservative in the sense that he thinks that these radical tabula rasa solutions are doomed to failure and ignore the needs of real people. He sees the work of leaders like Reagan and Thatcher as a move back towards a more liberal world, based on individual freedoms and gradual progress.

Klein comes from a very different perspective and certainly when it comes to particular historical figure and events her analysis couldn’t be more different. Her descriptions of figures like Pinochet, Thatcher and Yeltsin, for example, are very different from Johnson’s, to say the least. That said, for me, the central and most interesting argument of Klein’s is not the Shock Doctrine described in the title (which is often quite poorly argued) but rather her placing of the free market policies advocated by Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of economics in precisely the utopian, tabula rasa-like sphere that Johnson describes so well in taking apart left-wing movements in the twentieth century. Klein, rather than being the radical that many would imagine her to be, is in fact a conservative. A conservative of the left rather than the right, for sure, but a conservative none the less.

Klein argues also that the Chicago School free market advocates have gone down a similarly utopian path to the communists described by Johnson, arrogantly believing that their economic system leads to an ideal society and justifies extreme measures to achieve it. Like the utopianism described by Johnson, Klein argues that this utopian vision leads also to moral relativism, supporting dictators like Pinochet for example and turning a blind eye to the atrocities because they were less important than the utopian economic reforms. Like Johnson, she also argues that these utopian visions do not serve the real needs of people who don’t want the slate wiped clean but want gradual reform and development within a democratic framework. It also leads to corruption, as in totalitarian regimes, with people taking the opportunity to line their own pockets whilst telling themselves that they are serving a higher cause. Johnson and Klein have different targets but their criticisms of those targets are remarkably similar.

All in all, reading these two books together drives home for me the point that the late nineteenth and twentieth century cul-de-sac of left and right based politics has been a disaster. What we need, rather than the utopian solutions of either the right or left, is a return to the classic liberalism of individual freedom and a pragmatic approach to what Karl Popper calls ‘piecemeal engineering’, trying to improve institutions and solve problems in a practical way, based on the needs of real people and with democratic institutions that enable the people to remove leaders when they go against the needs of people.

Marxist Nutters

2008-03-02T22:45:00.005+08:00

Since the collapse of communism there has always been an argument that Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc were an aberration from real Marxism and therefore that real Communism had never really been tried. This has enabled some on the left to keep alive their belief in Marx despite the seeming failure of communism. Of course this is nonsense because, rather than being some accidental aberration, the totalitarianism that has resulted in every attempt to implement Marxism was an inevitable result of Marxism’s closed, utopian system and of the class-based demonization of whole groups of people, however well-meaning Marx’s original sentiments may have been in some respects. It does at least have some semblance of a basis for discussion, however.

This cannot be said of a whole other group of nutters who, rather than regarding Stalin and Mao as aberrant monsters, regard the real problem that caused the failure of communism as being that these great leaders were sold out by wishy-washy liberals like Kruschev and Deng Xiaoping. If only hard-core Stalinists and Maoists had inherited the mantle of communism, they argue, they could have carried on the good work, exterminated the last few million reactionaries opposing them and achieved the glorious world communist revolution. I first came across this weird field of human thought when reading some of the work of the French Structuralist, Marxist influenced philosophers like Badiou and Althusser. Badiou, for example, was for many years a Maoist, regarding the Culural Revolution as a great event. He has since gone on to create a new definition of the ethics of evil, which can accommodate his previous support for Mao, rather than simply `fes up and admit that he had been a bit of an idiot and wasn’t quite as smart as he thought.

Whilst this sort of behavior is perhaps not so unexpected from ivory tower French intellectuals, my prize for Leninist-Stalinist-Maoist Nutter of the year goes to this guy, Comrade Zero. It`s hard sometimes not to think that this site is a satire but he is seemingly for real. The site is replete with a multitude of ironies, for example simultaneously campaigning against police brutality in the USA whilst also arguing for the implementation of the policies of Stalin; that well-known advocate of caring, community policing.

Scandinavian Punkjazz and other things

2007-12-14T18:24:00.002+08:00

Well, I've finished the photography class which was the reason for starting this blog so maybe I'll keep it going with some other random stuff, photography related or otherwise. Here's some of the music I've been listening to recently:

Some new stuff:
Squealing, screaming free jazz in the Brotzmann, Hession/Wilkinson/Fell tradition but with (sometimes) a rock edge. It has that joyous, snarling noise, volume and power that typifies the best of free jazz and is a world away from the pointless politeness of many modern conservatory trained jazz musicians. A glorious noise indeed and album of the year for me.

I've never really been into Radiohead but I've been listening to this a lot recently. The first half of the album pretty much washes over me but there is some excellent stuff on the second half, particularly tracks like Faust Arp, Jigsaw and Videotape.

Some old stuff:
This period of Aretha's work is often dismissed because people perceive it to be inferior to her later more well-known work. It is often criticized because people feel that the jazz arrangements don't suit her voice compared to the out and out soul that she did later. Personally I love this stuff; it's precisely the tension between her voice and the arrangements that makes it great. You can sense her caught between holding back and pushing against the music.

This is another often criticized album but for different reasons. At the other end of her career from Aretha in the album above, this was Billie Holiday's last recording, shortly before her death. She had drink and drug problems, her voice was falling apart, she couldn't remember the lyrics, but again its the the tension that makes it work, this time between her cracked, fading voice and the lush arrangements. From a technical point of view her voice is all over the place but it has an emotional power that is heart-breaking.

Nightlife

2007-11-13T15:08:00.000+08:00

'Young Nightlife' was the photography brief this week. Me and Helen went to a gig at the Fringe Club where there were three bands playing as part of the HK Live series of gigs. One of the features as always at the Fringe is the number of people taking photographs and videoing. It really seems that every little event is so recorded and documented nowadays. There were half a dozen photographers and two or three people with video cameras, plus people taking photos with their mobile phones etc. At the start there were more people documenting the gig than there were in the audience and at one point a kind of mini queue of people waiting to take close-up shots even developed.

We went to HK Live a few months ago and it was pretty good, especially a local band Innisfallen who were excellent, but overall this wasn't a great gig. The first artist was ST, a Hong Kong electronic artist who was by far the strongest of the three in the sense that he at least had his own sound and style and a bit of 'edge'. The second band, Marfa & Ne-af from LA, was visually the most interesting and most of the shots are of them but musically they were pretty dire. They were a 'we're crap but in a knowing, ironic kind of way so that makes it OK' kind of band. Unfortunately being knowing and ironic doesn't change the fact that they were still crap. The last performers were Snoblind - two accountants showing us their photo albums over a generic, wishy-washy electronic soundtrack does not an engaging multimedia experience make in my book, so we left.

Maybe I'm just getting too old for 'young nightlife'.

Foreigners

2007-11-13T15:00:00.001+08:00

The topic this time was 'Foreigners' with the particular proviso that we could only use a mobile phone camera. In my job I take pictures of fellow foreigners very often so I wanted to try something different. I also wanted to subvert the camera-phone limitations.

I went to the harbour and decided to shoot some harbour landscapes, for which a camera-phone is about the worst tool. It's obviously very common for tourists to take photos of themselves at the harbour with their phones and I wanted to play with this idea. I decided to take many shots in different light and stitch them together in Photoshop to give a feeling of the multitude of images that tourists shoot of Hong Kong harbour but out of these very common shots produce something visually interesting. I used transparency to keep the feeling of multiple images and to give the composition a rhythm.

Old Streets and Beggars

2007-11-13T14:54:00.000+08:00

The next two topics were 'beggars' and 'old streets'. I didn't have time to shoot so much for these two weeks. The beggars topic in particular needs some investment in time to do well. I feel that shooting beggars out of context isn't so meaningful, to do it well you need to get to know them and their stories. The beggar shot here is of the guy who hangs out across the road from our office. I see him most days when I get off the bus and it would be nice to get to know him and maybe do a photojournalism project on his daily life someday.

The old streets are Canal Street in Wan Chai and an old area near San Po Kong.

MTR

2007-11-13T13:17:00.000+08:00

'People on the MTR' was the next topic.

I felt I got a mix of shots, some when the MTR is stereotypically busy and some when it was almost deserted (the Tseung Kwan O line on a Saturday morning). I also experimented with taking a series, see the last photo, which I want to explore more later.

Shopping, part 2

2007-11-13T13:13:00.000+08:00

After Times Square I wandered over to the Beverley Mall near Sogo where there are a lot of small fashion shops. The photographer shooting the sales girls wasn't quite sure how he felt about me photographing him.

Shopping, part 1

2007-11-13T13:05:00.001+08:00

The next topic was 'People Shopping in Shopping Malls'. It's always more tempting to shoot somewhere old and a bit run-down as it tends to be visually more interesting and people are generally more relaxed and open but I wanted to try shooting in a more sterile, middle-class environment and see if I could make some interesting images there so I shot in Times Square in Causeway Bay.

Unofficial Spaces

2007-11-13T00:58:00.000+08:00

This set of photos was not part of an assignment but was taken the same week as the shopping photos. I took my camera on my hike up the mountain up the road from our house and luckily the old people had constructed their unofficial swimming pool in the stormwater drainage channel. They make it by putting boards covered with sheeting against the fence across the channel.

I had seen them before but had never had my camera with me. When I first got there there were several old ladies swimming and they were understandably reticent about a strange gweilo photographing them in their swimming costumes. Luckily a local guy turned up later and I got in the 'pool' and and everyone relaxed and were fine with me taking some shots. They told me that they usually swam early in the morning because otherwise the government busybodies would come and stop them swimming.

I really like these small acts of creativity and disobedience that you find everywhere.

In the style of Walker Evans

2007-11-12T23:19:00.001+08:00

Our first assignment was to shoot in the style of Walker Evans. I had to go to West Kowloon for my Environmental Studies project so I did some shooting whilst I was over there.

We chatted to some old ladies who lived in Tai Kok Tsui in the little square of streets that jut out into the construction area for what will be the new West Kowloon Cultural District. This is the area where the Johnnie To film 'Breaking News' was shot. The ladies told us that where they were sitting used to be next to the ferry pier before the reclamation work. At that time the area was lively with many people coming and going, many hawkers and dai pai dongs selling fresh seafood etc. but now the area has died. They missed the life of the district and missed the sea view, which has been replaced by a construction site and new developments but didn't want to move because this was where they had always lived and where their friends were.

They feel that the government just does what it wants and doesn't take their views into account. They just hope that there will be somewhere for them to sit and talk in the new development.

The Blog

2007-11-07T22:45:00.001+08:00

This is my blog for the digital photography course I'm taking at the moment.