Hiding and Living¬ — A Day in a Service Lane: Exhibiting Invisibility

A metropolis always appears to be a competitive place, with people vying for attention everywhere. But behind this bustling scene, there are some people who try to survive by keeping a low profile; while marginalised individuals are surviving in marginal spaces within the city, there is a paucity of research investigating the production and use of differential spaces within Asian metropolises. The research presented in this paper focuses on the users of Hong Kong’s service lanes, exploring the subtle transformation between the visibility and invisibility of space, and the disappearance and reappearance of daily life, and further illuminates how this transformation provides living space for marginalised people in the city. The paper, documenting an exhibition titled “A Day in a Service Lane”, delves into the display of photographs reporting the changing patterns of use of the service lane in an informal exhibition space within a service lane and discusses the fortuitous encounters and visitors' reactions to such an experiment. This research aims to highlight the urgency of considering the needs of marginalised individuals and the use of inconspicuous spaces for a more inclusive and spatially just metropolis.