Traversing Hong Kong: Strategies of Representation and Resistance in Lens-based Media

This dissertation, "Traversing Hong Strategies of Representation and Resistance in Lens-based Media" by Norman Jackson, Ford, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author.Abstract of thesis entitled "Traversing Hong Strategies of Representation and Resistance in Lens-based Media" Submitted by Norman Jackson Ford for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong in February 2006This dissertation develops a grounded theoretical construct for analysis, interpretation and presentation of lens-based media (photography, video, film, TV) in Hong Kong. Responding to the inadequacies found in, and common usage of, hybridity as strategic mode of analysis and resistance the traversal, the name of this theoretical process, opens up new avenues of image analysis while also functioning as a practical strategy for image presentation, as in curatorial practice for visual art. The traversal was found to be a multivalent mode of interpretation and practice that sees the production, consumption and distribution of images as integrated and constitutive. First and foremost a methodology for understanding and putting into practice ways of making, reading and distributing images in a variety of cultural contexts, the traversal developed its methods through a series of detailed analyses of particular images, texts and visual projects. Moving through chapters on the historical foundations of alternative lens- based media, conventional and resistant strategies of representation, new media, and critiques of hybridity and related theoretical positions, each chapter also presents discussions on the development of both Hong Kong's contemporary visual art and its broader visual culture.Simultaneously based on and resistant to hybridity theory the traversal relies on a series of related its dual application in theory and practice, a recognition of the importance of travel, sensitivity to contexts of production, a recognition of the problematics of the 'local', use of jetlag as metaphor, a tangential approach to confrontation, the application of strategies of appropriation, researcher positioned within a 'practitioner/observer' structure and finally, a focus on exhibition and curatorial practice. By using these various foci, the traversal has found a series of ways to undo processes of visual reductionism found in the imaging strategies employed in and related to Hong Kong. It achieved this by using the points above to create new relationships between; how and under what condition images are made, new interpretive readings in relation to relevant theoretical concepts, how these images are presented, and how they are finally encountered by end- users - providing strategies to both 'read' and disseminate images in relation to this city space.Developing and empowering a variety of imaging strategies in response to a growing hegemonic image-scape, this dissertation attempted to both enhance image analysis and interpretation as well as intervene in conventional exhibition practice regarding Hong Kong and China as it is represented internationally. Ultimately, the traversal is to be seen, in its concern with the processes of representation in Hong Kong and abroad, as about understanding, interrogating and making problematic the ways we work with images from, produced in, and moving through Hong Kong - with an eye towards its future application in a wide variety of other sites and contexts.10.5353/th_b3580739Hong Kong (China) - In artCultural fusion and the artsArt and society