I. PARALLEL CROSSING 十時刻 @MOST///
I. PARALLEL CROSSING@MOST
...a bell on the mountain-top sounds the coming of ten, then ensues a change, all of a sudden, yet all so little…

Artists: CHEUNG Ling Shuet, Castaly LEUNG Ching Man, Angel SO Hiu Yan, Andy TAM, Galen TSE, MC Yan
Curator: LAM Hon Kin / MOST
Opening Reception: 4-6pm, 11/ 10/ 2009
Venue(1): Green Space, 7F, Jockey Club Creative Arts Center (JCCAC)
Exhibition Period: 1/10 –19/10, 2009
Opening Hours: 10am – 8pm

Venue(2): MOST, 7F-12A F, JCCAC
Exhibition Period: 1/10 – 31/10, 2009
Opening Hours: 12pm – 8pm
The project Parallel Crossing aims to postulate an embedded cultural theory in the development of artwork and culture at this crucial point of time. The “Culturo-Genetic Analysis (CEA)” involves three inter-related dimensions of experimentation:

CURATORIAL PLATFORM OF PARALLEL CROSSING ////
This collaborative exhibition brings MOST, Green Space in JCCAC, Private Nations/ Radiodada in Langham Place, together in one. It forges an ideated program, which can be materialized as a value-builder, an idea-transformer, a discourse-planter and a refugee camp for institution-resistant artist, with a view to reversing cultural stigma/ coma in this shifting era of post-colonial integration. An art-historical study will be initiated in parallel as a biological examination of the evolutionary relatedness among various art groups or institutions, in which a perspective is created through a painting, photography, installation or discourse, like molecular-sequence data processing in genetic science (phylogenesis). There is also a study of self-acculturation or structural change in individual art form, or artist with a holistic approach in an open-ecosystem, which allows the incestuous co-existence of different unities (ontogenesis). Finally, there is the contextual study of lateral, para/ co-existing artistic praxis or structures, which further involves a micro-view looking at art in Hong Kong (microgenesis).

These three interrelated art-historical creative domains have been created as a curatorial platform pertinent to genetic analysis of our art scene in Hong Kong at this serious moment (i. e. the founding of an authority of The West Kowloon Cultural District WKCD). Featuring mixed-media work, painting, photography and some hours of video performance, “MOST’s exhibitions set out to seize this critical moment before the city vanishes.” (Yeung Yang, Artistic Director, OC 2009)

TRAJECTORIES //
MOST’s curatorial theme in JCCAC (MOST Gallery and Green Space) concerns Hong Kong’s urban position with which artists are facing. While the artists/ cultural institutions are riding out the financial tsunami, they face concurrently the uncertainty of the West Kowloon Cultural District (WKCD), institution impairment (i.e. JCCAC & HKADC), commercialization of art practice, and ‘black-hole’ operation of public museum, among many others…

Subsuming of Hong Kong to China/
On a global view, the general lack of self-confidence after the SARS epidemic is now reflected on Hong Kong’s cultural planning. At an unprecedented speed, she is made subsumed to China’s ‘characterless’ urbanity. The future WKCD Rail Terminal will be linked to the economic fabric of Pearl River Delta region. (Can one imagine any Documenta tram station in Kassel directly connected with an Express Line?) Cultural worker looks to 798, rather than JCCAC, Fotanian or Cattle Depot for promising career…

Culture At Stake/
Face-off acculturation swamps over artists’ works and identity crisis after 1997 is re-emerging ahead of time! Are the fragile cultural workers capable of meeting the global, magnetic influence of China’s political and economic power?

Local v Global: Post-colonialism & Beyond/
The sensitivity of ‘One-World-Culture’ possibly derived by the WKCD model is coming of age! Since planning of Hong Kong’s cultural infrastructure is/ will be overshadowed by provision in WKCD, will we be again assimilated to the greater systems or melted into the analogous metrics of small-circle internationalism? Will the upcoming global culture be in tune with the tension of heritage localization? Will artists successfully re-construct their genetic identity facing a shifting era? How can these parallel layers of cultural reading be cross-examined? The artists in PARALLEL CROSSING pose possible answers to these phenomena in question.

About NOW, OR NEVER //
Dr. Yeung Yang’s curatorial statement conceives October Contemporary “as a material organization of resources, stakeholders and interests, and a symbolic organization of ideas, values, needs, and imaginations…the public identity of OC is given priority to the sub-title, ‘Now, or Never’, which is a state of mind, a way of being.” Our dialogical exhibition Parallel Crossing is really a matter of response; revealing art history, art development and art language at this crucial time and the potential