In 1990, there was a Deep Dish TV series of five one-hour
programs, "...will be televised: Video
Documents From Asia,” curated
and produced by Shu Lea Cheang. The program intended to reverse the
usual flow of communication
from America to the other, lesser-heard side of the globe, from “the
developing
countries to the developed metropolis.” The title of Hong Kong’s
document, “Only Something That Is About To Disappear Becomes
An Image,” was a line excerpted from
an essay that later became a book, Hong Kong: Culture and
the Politics of Disappearance by Professor Ackbar Abbas. The series is
probably one of the earliest
creative video projects in Hong Kong art history. Most of the works were
the
outcome of a video workshop that had privileged
access to selected films archived in the Government Information
Service. Some footage dated back to the early 20th
century, almost around the time movies
were born. Filmmakers in those
times were mostly in the military, journalists, or working with the
church. Many images that captured the street life of Hong Kong in the
last
century were handheld and nostalgic. In the 1990 project, it was mainly
the
first generation of Hong Kong video artists—amateurs, non-journalists,
the camcorder generation—who did the works. This video document is a
landmark
to announce the fading of the colonial age and entrance into the
post-'97 era.
Read more
