'The past that we didn't know we had'

 

The video is part of the exhibition 'What we see and make seen', which is the outcome of the cooperation between the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste (Fine Arts and Transdisciplinary Art Master ) and the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Fine Arts department).The project is based on the study of notions and functions of art in public spheres in Hong Kong and Zurich.

This is the abstract documentation of the impression Hong Kong took on the members of a research group who had their first time there for a week. The way they remembered the city was explored through questionnaires and interviews and as an outcome their collective experiences were dominated by with the same stereotypes, use of expressions or their pre-Hong Kong images and own stories that came out by the influence of city. The question emerged how much the foreigner invents  the journey to the unknown and how much the remembering resembles the actual experience of being there.

 

Statement 
“what he sought was always something lying ahead, and even if it was a matter of the past it was a past that changed gradually as he advanced on his journey, because the traveler’s past changes according to the route he has followed: not the immediate past, that is, to which each day that goes by adds a day, but the more remote past. Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.” 
― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities