INITIATIVES:
signals…瞬息
at Para Site

Curated by Billy Tang and Celia Ho, Signals marked the first chapter of the new direction for Para Site, Hong Kong’s leading contemporary art centre. Supported by the M Art Foundation, it featured a series of commissions and existing works in dialogue with an experimental display structure that transformed throughout the exhibition.

In the context of the exhibition, Signals represented modes of kinetic art, communication, actions, and interventions that created a chain of reactions. Participating artists made use of cues, including sound, smell, movement, and smoke, to interrogate complex issues related to dispersed communities, migratory flows, and the intersection of technology, science, and architecture.

The exhibition unfolded over three phases over six months: signals…storms and patterns (18 March–28 May), which focused on self-organization and the politics of space in contemporary artmaking; signals…folds and splits (10 June–30 July), reflecting on the temporality of artworks and alternative economies of time; and finally, signals…here and there (12 August–29 September), exploring dispersal as a strategy to think about contemporary global issues through the lens of Hong Kong. Taking inspiration from the seminal gallery and art salon Signals London (1964– 1966), a cross-disciplinary meeting point for a group of postwar European, Latin American, and Asian artists who joined around an expanded concept of kinetic art, the exhibition represented strategies to reconnect with the global community from the pivot point of Hong Kong in a post-pandemic world. It was conceived to evolve and remain dynamic beyond its opening, with the reconfigurable display system serving as an ongoing spatial investigation as artworks/happenings rotated, unfolded, fragmented, or dissolved throughout the exhibition period.

Over three chapters spanning six months of onsite experiments, curators initiated ‘atmospheric interventions’ parallel to the exhibition. Culminating in a publishing project edited by Wing Chan, it connects local writers in Hong Kong to diverse places like Borneo, Istanbul, Kinshasa, London, Manila, Sheffield, and Sumatra. The writings explore the meaning of pausing and accessing power in terms of electricity, energy, land lights, and workers’ rights. The result is an 88-page publication with texts by artists, art historians, and cultural workers, including C&G Artpartment (Clara Cheung & Gum Cheng Yet Man), Lesley Anne Can, Wing Chan, Lyra Garcellano, A. X. Ledesma, Eileen Legaspi Ramirez, Di Liu, Lani Maestro, Arianna Mercado, Cedrick Nzolo & Dominique Malaquais, and Michelle W T Wong. Also featured is a quote from Luke Ching Chin Was and photography by South Ho Siu Nam.