Towards a dialogue : initiating engagements on the cultural front
Start Date
14-4-2023 11:15 AM
End Date
14-4-2023 12:30 PM
Description
This presentation discusses the forms and significance of people-to-people engagements by examining projects that initiate cultural exchanges between Hong Kong and Africa. As COVID-19 becomes endemic, the world is resuming normal. But what does it mean to re-engage ourselves in cultural dialogues with the emergence of new possibilities and crises? To answer this question, the presentation looks at two projects of such nature and discusses the impacts. The first one is a documentary on Black women artists in Hong Kong (produced by the presenter with an HKBU grant). The Black artists featured employ their art forms to negotiate their identities in HK, a postcolonial space fuelled by various discourses. By examining the data collected from the audience of the film, I look at how they understand the intersectionality of the gendered socio-political discourse as well as the artists’ reconciliation of (dis)placements and homogenous beauty standards. The second project adapts and stages plays written by South African women playwrights. By inviting them to collaborate with local directors in HK, the project aims at bringing HK audiences to the forefront of synthesising postcolonial female subjectivities. It probes the interactions among SA playwrights, HK theatrical practitioners, and audiences to excavate women’s subjectivities adapted and how they reshape the local audience’s understanding of female identities. With these two projects in mind, the presentation aspires to look at the roles played by education (university and public-facing) in interrogating multi-lateral cultural identity on the cultural front of engagements between Hong Kong and Africa.
Document Type
Presentation
Recommended Citation
Chow-Quesada, E. S. M. (2023, April). Towards a dialogue: Initiating engagements on the cultural front. Presented at the International Symposium on Africa-China Relations in an Era of Uncertain Future. Lingnan University, Hong Kong.
Towards a dialogue : initiating engagements on the cultural front
This presentation discusses the forms and significance of people-to-people engagements by examining projects that initiate cultural exchanges between Hong Kong and Africa. As COVID-19 becomes endemic, the world is resuming normal. But what does it mean to re-engage ourselves in cultural dialogues with the emergence of new possibilities and crises? To answer this question, the presentation looks at two projects of such nature and discusses the impacts. The first one is a documentary on Black women artists in Hong Kong (produced by the presenter with an HKBU grant). The Black artists featured employ their art forms to negotiate their identities in HK, a postcolonial space fuelled by various discourses. By examining the data collected from the audience of the film, I look at how they understand the intersectionality of the gendered socio-political discourse as well as the artists’ reconciliation of (dis)placements and homogenous beauty standards. The second project adapts and stages plays written by South African women playwrights. By inviting them to collaborate with local directors in HK, the project aims at bringing HK audiences to the forefront of synthesising postcolonial female subjectivities. It probes the interactions among SA playwrights, HK theatrical practitioners, and audiences to excavate women’s subjectivities adapted and how they reshape the local audience’s understanding of female identities. With these two projects in mind, the presentation aspires to look at the roles played by education (university and public-facing) in interrogating multi-lateral cultural identity on the cultural front of engagements between Hong Kong and Africa.