Hong Kong Culture in the West Kowloon Cultural District
Wednesday 1 February 2023
13:00-14:00
Auditorium, McClay Library
Speaker:
Zexun ZHANG (School of Art History and Cultural Policy, UCD)
Zexun holds degrees in Art History and Cultural Management from mainland China and Hong Kong SAR respectively. He previously studied at Queen’s University Belfast and is currently enrolled at UCD. His research focuses on the intersection of culture and local development in Asia, including topics such as representations of local culture, the impact of globalization on cultural policies, and arts management in the Asian context.
Outline:
With the ambition to brand Hong Kong as a cultural hub in East Asia and lured by the tourist economy, the HKSAR Government has led the cultural planning of a cultural district, namely the West Kowloon Cultural District (WKCD), after the handover in 1997. The WKCD is a 40-hectare cultural district located in the northwest part of Victoria harbour, consisting of iconic arts and cultural facilities and residential/hotel/office spaces. With the grand opening of the Xiqu Centre in 2019 and the M+ museum in 2021, it is interesting to see how Hong Kong culture has been interpreted through the programming and how missions and goals have been achieved. The contribution of this talk is to re-think how to formulate cultural narratives in the context of decolonisation and East Asian cultures.
为了将香港打造成东亚的文化中心，在旅游经济的诱惑下，香港特区政府在1997年回归后主导了一个文化区的文化规划，即西九文化区。西九是一个占地40公顷的文化区，位于维多利亚港的西北部，由标志性的文化艺术设施和住宅/酒店/办公空间组成。随着2019年戏曲中心和2021年M+博物馆的盛大开幕，我们将回顾香港文化是如何通过规划来诠释的，以及如何实现使命和目标。本讲座的贡献在于重新思考如何在去殖民化和东亚文化的背景下制定文化政策。
Presentation
