http://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2015/Umbrella-Festival-Opening/49316366_5Ctxzg#!i=4063384701&k=fcsrMtW
The ‘Umbrella Festival’ opened today at the JCCAC in Shep Kip Mei. You’ll have noticed the inverted commas I put around the festival name, yes the festival poster is yellow and has an umbrella on it – but that’s about all the ‘festival’ has in common with 2014’s umbrella protests. When one of the festival’s curator’s Prof. Katrien Jacobs stands on stage and starts joking about making her speech notes on a post-it like on the Lennon Wall before continuing with “As a foreigner I found the protests sexy and fun and that’s what we want to do with this festival, keep the fun going…”
http://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2015/Umbrella-Festival-Opening/49316366_5Ctxzg#!i=4063376599&k=tJJfR6G
The Umbrella Festival is an anaemic poorly conceived joke. An insult to the HongKongers who stood up for their beliefs and voiced a desire for Universal Suffrage to precipitate the removal of the morally corrupt politicians and civil servants who are destroying the Hong Kong we love and call home with their arse-licking of the mainland amidst the lining of their own pockets.
The JCCAC is an interesting space and there are mini-exhibits and photos spread over it’s 9 floors. I didn’t see the words universal suffrage anywhere, not a single mention about the underlying reasons for the protest. Not a mention of the police violence – there was one photo of the tear gas. The only comment about police violence was in a theatrical piece by FM Theatre Power (see video) that was part of the opening ceremony, but even that was tempered when the police become ‘caring mothers’ and embraced the demonstrators.
There is a mini-Lennon wall – but no explanation of the what it symbolized or how it got started… You can add you own post-it, but the ones already posted were banal and safe, as were the chalk drawings. For ‘fun’ as Professor Jacobs described it, get a poster and walk around to get ‘umbrella’ stamps at different parts of the building…
http://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2015/Umbrella-Festival-Opening/49316366_5Ctxzg#!i=4063397027&k=GBDQS5g
Another of the curators claims as they opened the festival was to celebrate the Umbrella protests art… the protest zones were vibrant artistic and discoursive hubs with new things being created and revealed everyday. Yet almost none of that is here, why not?
There are some interesting close-up photos – but no photos which show the scale or size of the protests. In fact I couldn’t find an exhibit which even explained that there were three protest zones.
What could have been a fascinating examination of the protests and the art that emerged over the 79 days instead reeks of a government funded snow job, an attempt to rewrite one of the seminal moments in Hong Kong’s history.
http://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2015/Umbrella-Festival-Opening/49316366_5Ctxzg#!i=4063380757&k=ZbwQphB