Curatorial statement

So long, thanks again for the fish

喂！拜拜你條尾

Terve, ja kiitos taas kaloista

There are moments when our lives are stuck in on pause, a constant blinking of time as if we are on the verge of a reboot. In recent years, Hong Kong faced many social and political upheavals and changes. This year a new National Security Law was introduced. We also continue to face a global pandemic that impacts our health, our livelihoods, our borders and sense of community. But Hong Kong is not alone in experiencing an uncertain future. We share our experiences knowing that we are all somehow entangled and ask: Instead of utopian visions, should we be looking at the imperfect to recalibrate the stuff of survival?

In So long, thanks again for the fish, five artists acknowledge the strength of being imperfect, even when broken. They turn to their personal reflections on defiance, renewal and hope as the touchstones of their works. Angela Su’s videos and embroideries reflect on gender, technology and the histories of systems of power; Christopher K. Ho imagines a primordial genealogy of glitched geometries to relearn our world; Cedric Maridet breaks down slogans into notes to retune our sound-scapes; Luke Ching fabricates geographies of flags and laws to present a new sense of being global; and Lam Tungpang draws on children’s stories and folktales as he makes and breaks our sense of home.

So long, thanks again for the fish takes as inspiration Anna Tsing’s The Mushroom at the End of the World and her proposal of collaborative survival. Tsing uses contaminations as encounters that unknowingly seep into and alter structures that can lead to diversity, and collaboration as a way of working across differences. The exhibition features artworks that collaborate with singers, builders, writers, illustrators and code poets. We also seek unexpected connections and diversity by disrupting the historical site of Levyhalli with our presence as we work across differences in our imperfect encounters, and then – maybe – we can give thanks again for the fish.

Yeewan Koon, Curator