In the Hong Kong Chief Executive’s 2020 Policy Address, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Government implemented strategies to integrate arts and technology as a new trend in cultural development. With the co-existence of a governmental initiative in ‘arts and technology’ (‘arts tech’) development and the rapid advancement of new technologies, it is frequently seen that new technologies (e.g., virtual reality [VR] and augmented reality) have been widely adopted in interactive media art productions in Hong Kong. Drawing on ethnographic research on a commercial virtual event, and a VR theatre performance produced by a Hong Kong cross-media creative studio, this study unveils discrepancies existing between government officials, commercial marketers, and art creators, ranging from objectives to practices in applying technologies to virtual art production. The juxtaposition of a market-driven commercial virtual campaign and the Chinese nationalist agenda embodied in the government-funded arts tech project reflects how the socio-historical background and changing political situation in Hong Kong extends its postcolonial neoliberal nationalism (PNN) to the arts tech arena. The contribution of this paper is two-fold: first, by adopting ‘China as method’ as epistemological analysis, the mediation of PNN by arts tech explains a ‘southbound imaginary’ in Hong Kong’s arts and cultural practices through a changing relationship between Hong Kong and mainland China. Second, in contrast to the current scholarship focusing on human governance in the formation of neoliberal nationalism, this paper underscores the ‘power’ of techno-cultural material in mediating the neoliberal nationalism of Hong Kong, after its reversion to China, through arts tech development.
AugsburgT. (2017). Interdisciplinary arts. In FrodemanR. (Ed.), The oxford handbook of interdisciplinarity (2nd ed., Chapter 10). Oxford University Press.
2.
BravicL. (n.d.). A short history of digital art: Between new technologies & innovative artistic practices. Artland Magazine. https://magazine.artland.com/digital-art/
3.
ChanC. K.FungA. Y. H. (2018). Disarticulation between civic values and nationalism: Mapping Chinese state nationalism in post-handover Hong Kong. China Perspectives, 3(114), 41–50. https://doi.org/10.4000/chinaperspectives.8106
4.
ChanS. C. K. (1997). 北進想像專題小組:北進想像 [‘Northbound imaginary’ group, ‘northbound imagination: Re-Positing Hong Kong postcolonial discourse’]. In ChanS. C. K. (Ed.), 文化想像與意識形態:當代香港文化政治評論 [Cultural imaginary and ideology: Critical essays on contemporary Hong Kong cultural politics], (pp. 3–10). Oxford University Press.
5.
ChenK. H. (2010). Asia as method: Toward deimperialization. Duke University Press.
6.
ChuY.-W. (2020). Hong Kong (in China) studies: Hong Kong popular culture as example. Global Media and China, 5(2), 109–123. https://doi.org/10.1177/2059436420917564
7.
ChuY.-W.ChenP. Y.LinS. K. (2020). Introduction: Mediating borders: New boundaries for Hong Kong studies. Global Media and China, 5(2), 103–108. https://doi.org/10.1177/2059436420927647
CorbinJ.StraussA. (2015). Basics of qualitative research: Techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory (4th ed.). Sage.
10.
CypherM. (2017). Unpacking collaboration: Non-human agency in the ebb and flow of practice-based visual art research. Journal of Visual Art Practice, 16(2), 119–130. https://doi.org/10.1080/14702029.2017.1292379
11.
FongB. C. (2017). One country, two nationalisms: Center-periphery relations between Mainland China and Hong Kong, 1997–2016. Modern China, 43(5), 523–556. https://doi.org/10.1177/0097700417691470
12.
GarauC.IlardiE. (2014). The “Non-Places” meet the “Places:” Virtual tours on smartphones for the enhancement of cultural heritage. Journal of Urban Technology, 21(1), 79–91. https://doi.org/10.1080/10630732.2014.884384
13.
GellA. (1992). The technology of enchantment and the enchantment of technology. In Anthropology, art and aesthetics, (pp. 40–63). Clarendon Press
14.
GellA. (1998). Art and agency: An anthropological theory. Clarendon Press.
15.
GohD. P. (2008). From colonial pluralism to postcolonial multiculturalism: Race, state formation and the question of cultural diversity in Malaysia and Singapore. Sociology compass, 2(1), 232–252. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9020.2007.00065.x
16.
HarmanG. (2009). Prince of networks: Bruno Latour and metaphysics. re.press.
HorstH.MillerD. (2012). Normativity and materiality: A view from digital anthropology. Media International Australia, 145(1), 103–111. https://doi.org/10.1177/1329878X1214500112
24.
KarvelyteK. (2020). Shifting meanings in changing contexts: The role of the creative city in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Taipei. International Journal of Cultural Policy, 26(2), 166–183. https://doi.org/10.1080/10286632.2018.1479748
25.
KaulN. (2019). The political project of postcolonial neoliberal nationalism. Indian Politics and Policy, 2(1), 3–30. https://doi.org/10.18278/inpp.2.1.2
26.
KawaiY. (2009). Neoliberalism, nationalism, and intercultural communication: A critical analysis of a Japan's neoliberal nationalism discourse under globalization. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 2(1), 16–43. https://doi.org/10.1080/17513050802567049
27.
KimY.LeeH. (2022). Falling in love with virtual reality art: A new perspective on 3D immersive virtual reality for future sustaining art consumption. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 38(4), 371–382. https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2021.1944534
28.
KuA. S.PunN. (2011). Introduction: Remaking citizenship in Hong Kong. In KuA. S.PunN. (Eds.), Remaking citizenship in Hong Kong: Community, nation and the global city (pp. 1–15). Taylor & Francis.
29.
LatourB. (1999). Pandora’s hope: Essays on the reality of science studies. Harvard University Press.
30.
LatourB. (2004). Politics of nature: How to bring the sciences into Democracy. Harvard University Press.
31.
LatourB. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford University Press.
32.
LeungG. L. K. (2019). Innovative and creative industries in Hong Kong: A global city in China and Asia. Routledge.
33.
LittwinK.StockW. G. (2020). Signaling smartness: Smart cities and digital art in public spaces. Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice, 8(1), 20–32. https://doi.org/10.1633/JISTaP.2020.8.1.2
34.
MoosaviL. (2020). The decolonial bandwagon and the dangers of intellectual decolonisation. International Review of Sociology, 30(2), 332–354. https://doi.org/10.1080/03906701.2020.1776919
35.
MorozovE. (2013). To save everything, click here: The folly of technological solutionism. Penguin Books Ltd.
36.
OngA. (2006). Neoliberalism as exception: Mutations in citizenship and sovereignty. Duke University Press.
RacoM.GilliamK. (2012). Geographies of abstraction, urban entrepreneurialism, and the production of new cultural spaces: The West Kowloon cultural district, Hong Kong. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 44(6), 1425–1442. https://doi.org/10.1068/a44411
39.
ReyesV. (2020). Ethnographic toolkit: Strategic positionality and researchers’ visible and invisible tools in field research. Ethnography, 21(2), 220–240. https://doi.org/10.1177/1466138118805121
40.
SchuilenburgM.PaliB. (2020). Smart city imaginaries: Looking beyond the techno-utopian vision. In SchuilenburgM.PeetersR. (Eds.), The algorithmic society: Society, technology, power and knowledge (pp. 137–153). Routledge.
41.
ScottK. (2016). The digital city and mediated urban ecologies. Palgrave Macmillan.
42.
StraussA.CorbinJ. (2004). Open coding. In SealeC. (Ed.), Social research methods: A reader (pp. 303–306). Routledge.
43.
TangG.YuenR. H.-y. (2016). Hong Kong as the ‘neoliberal exception’of China: Transformation of Hong Kong citizenship before and after the transfer of sovereignty. Journal of Chinese Political Science, 21(4), 469–484. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11366-016-9438-7
