The second return of Hong Kong marks the end of the one country two system. As the clock strikes midnight, the fine dress of the city turns into rugs and her carriage reverted to pumpkins. With the rupture, comes the displacement of the city’s population like the brain drain that prompted the Berlin Wall erection. The Hong Kong airport have since become a precarious spatial-geopolitical threshold over which the specter of a second Cold War looms. The Norman Foster architectural and engineering marvel, once a symbol of pride signifying Hong Kong’s free and open society, now devolves into a set of fragile Pearly gates that struggles to uphold its promise as an egress to the world beyond. The thesis probes the underlying sociopolitical, historical and psychological vectors that converge at this increasingly critical border crossing. Peeling away the physical veneer, it seeks to expose and deconstruct the spatial-geographical politics of the air terminal. Taping into the realm of the unnarratable and intangibles, it probes the border-architecture in an age when telaesthesia perpetuates traumas, and traumas foreshadows memories of the future. In the manner of an autopsy, the immersive game medium is experimented as a tool to revisit the city’s final episodes. Developed alongside the thesis, the video game project serves as a set of visceral spatial re-enactments designed for public expression, connection, empowerment and archival of history. In the afterlife of the city, the simulacrum is an antidote to the bon fire of vanity, a therapy for reconciliation with traumatic encounters, as well as a virtual media artifact continuing the fairy tale’s unfulfilled glamours that is short-changed by an abrupt ending. As a methodology, the video game artifact is an alternative form of archaeology by which historical events could be systematically deconstructed, whereby intangible vectors of memories and perceptions can be explicated and rendered accessible.
In Game Footage Videos:
Chapter 7 – Exit and Rebirth: Final scene of departure signifying freedom from political persecution, systemic violence, and psychological stresses. Beginning of a diasporic person’s journey to find a new identity.m player’s apartment to final departure by plane.Sketch Illustrating overall flow of game narrative, from player’s apartment to final departure by plane.Chapter 5.7 – Narrow Streets: Video game scene Illustrating Hong Kong’s State Of Exception. Police rounding up pedestrians in downtown Central, perpetuating public fear under constant police surveillance.Scene Diagram illustrating scene breakdowns and overall chapter organization.Game Story Board – Prologue scene depicting a Hong Kong resident preparing to depart the city for good. The backdrop is a typical compact Hong Kong apartment, with everyday objects acting as storytelling devices.Chapter 5.5 – The Marionette: 721 Yuen Long West Rail Station. Stairs of Terror scene re-enacting infamous pro-gov tug attack on passengers on the 21st July, 2019. Police on scene of attack filmed turning a blind eye to violence and walking away.Chapter 2 – Down the Mechanical Belt: Video game scene allegorical of Memory/Trauma Depository. Player questions the end state of their deposited memories and exposes the censorship mechanism embedded by “infiltrating” the luggage belt system.Chapter 3 – Tunnel of Darkness Suitcase Scene: Player is downsized and placed in his suitcase. Player must escape the pursuit of the spotlight and avoid having “restricted” items getting illuminated. Books, banners, flags, respirators, have become restricted items under the new police state of Hong Kong.Chapter 1 – Something Lurking in the Background: Airport Terminal 1 link entrance bridges spanning over a valley of memories. Arrival hall below bridge is flooded into a river that symbolizes the collective subconscious of traumatic historical events and the prevalent milieu of systemic violence. Flooding is indicative of a one-way departure journey.Chapter 5.2 – From the Ashes: Chang’An Avenue 1989 June 4th. Recreation of Jeff Widener’s powerful historic image, where an anonymous Beijing resident single-handedly stopped a column of tanks in front of international press. Player explores the scene through both the tank operator’s perspective as well as through Jeff Widener’s Nikon FE2 camera fitted with a Nikkor 400mm 5.6 ED-IF lens.Chapter 5.3 – Dancing in the Rain: Player taken through a tour of the 2014 Occupy Central village/encampment at Harcourt road. She is introduced to various improvised street interventions of the protest village, such as first aid centres, outdoor classrooms, Lennon walls, the temporary public square. Player can converse with occupiers (Non Playable Character) in the scene to learn about the historic event.Chapter 7 – Exit and Rebirth: Take-off scene, where player clears the Hong Kong Borders and finally finds freedom from persecution, fear and systemic violence. Beginning of player’s diasporic journey to redefine their identity.
