How to “Bare Hand Withhold Blade Attack”?
The project named itself with “self-rescue” for it propose to spread a self-help attitude, giving out suggestion to the “Kai-fong” (neighborhood community) of Yau Ma Tei (as well as beyond), some means to rebel against the blind-development now prevailing in Hong Kong.
We encourage the public to not just appreciate, cherish their community, but also through their action and participation to help preserve all the precious things that constituted the lively district. Our everyday are in fact being subjected to more and more control, as urban renewal joined hands with developers, allowing giant entrepreneurs sprawling crawls affecting almost every aspects of our daily lives. We surely do not have any real “weapons” to fight against them, but why not do something and start our resist with our bare hands?
The project is divided into 4 parts. “Confront demonstration” questions the mainstream value about development, three artists Yau Ma Tei Gardener, Cheng Ka Yue and Tang Kwok Hin suggested related ways to resist against it through their specific case studies. “Rebel! for the Urban Renewal Authoritarian is near.” is a set of “Quan Pu” (Kung Fu Learning-Kit) with different postures teaching kai-fong how to fight against chain-stores monopoly and defend their rights in face of the profit-maximizing Urban Renewal Authority. The other two parts focus on some streetscape changes of Yau Ma Tei’s. “Who Took Away Painter Fung’s Stall?” exhibits photos and stuffs of the street-stall of Painter Fung just a block away from Wooferten in Shanghai Street, which recently got partially demolished. Art action by artists will response in-situ and remind people the unique artistic and humanistic touches “Painter Fung” has provided day in day out over the years.
Apart from above, Wooferten will launch an advertisement space named “N/A for chained stores Advertisement” free for local stores, with design and production aids provided from a team of artists. For the launching stage, we will display serveral hand-painted advertisements, of the stores that had disappeared or driven out from the local community or their original address, very often due to unreasonable rent increase.
