A conversation with Ian Woo, painter and program lead of MA Fine Arts at LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore, based on his lecture for the TC participants.  THE MYSTERIOUS IN THE ABSTRACT Ian, the last slide you showed in your lecture was Saint-Exupéry’s elephant eaten by a boa constrictor. Was it meant as a metaphor for your artistic practice? The elephant in the snake represents a possibility for the evolution of physical shape. By eating the elephant, the snake has become a dinosaur. This, to me, shows one of many possibilities of transformation that we can dream about. As artists, we play with contradictions and with the „what if“. Your lecture was titled „Streaming the Trace“. What’s your notion of trace and streaming? Streaming generally designates the electronic transportation of information. But if we think of it rather in relation to a person’s body and mind, it speaks about how we cannot help but behave in an interplay with the space that we are in. In a fast urban space like Hong Kong’s …

How precarious are the human and organic bodies in the concrete body of the city? How does the human scale still apply in a metropolis of the 21st century? What kind of strategies are developed by individuals to move through its tireless traffic and large-scale infrastructure? And what are the correlations between anonymity and density? All photos by Florian Geisseler.

The group’s second week in Hong Kong coincided with the annual Fire Dragon Dance in the neighbourhood of Tai Hang. Legend has it that the ritual expels ghosts and afflictions. All photos by Florian Geisseler.

“I am like a blind man here”, Wang told me with half a smile on the first day of the program in Zurich, when I sat down next to him. He was referring to the language barriers being a challenge to finding one’s way around in an unfamiliar place. Despite Hong Kong’s sophistication in regards to urban design and management of the huge number of people navigating through the city day by day (with the MTR connecting everyone in a speed and efficiency that leave Zurich’s chugging tramways far behind) I can relate to his experience much better since we’ve arrived at Victoria Harbour.

On September 16, while we patiently waited inside for the black rain and violent winds of typhoon Mangkhut to pass – talking, cooking, painting and unpacking instruments all day – many of Hong Kong’s buildings, roads and trees faced severe destruction. The authorities had issued Hurricane Signal 10 for this strongest of this year’s tropical cyclones. Many of us had never experienced a storm of such force. All photos by Florian Geisseler.