Moving Islands: Hong Kong's Archipelogics

Abstract: In 2018, plans for the Lantau Tomorrow Vision (LTV), a major reclamation project involving the creation of several artificial islands, were announced. Hong Kong's archipelagic identity will change dramatically as the LTV rewrites interrelations among islands and the mainland by smoothing out difference using artificial means. Art practitioners in Hong Kong have challenged themselves to invent an alternative perspective of the city to the LTV. This essay explores how artists negotiate the city's peripelagic relations while keeping the island form always in sight to counterbalance the networked intricacy and spatial reach that are the archipelago. At stake are new geographies and cartographies pledged to economic equality, social justice, and difference.