Co-authoring the space: the initial Lennon Wall Hong Kong in 2014 as socially engaged creativity

ABSTRACT

The versatile forms of artistic and creative practices sparked by social movements worldwide are not limited to artists’ intentional aims to create artworks. Instead, most of the mixed-method interventions usually emerge from citizens’ aspirations to support the cause. While the interconnectedness of culture, arts, and social movements is widely acknowledged, the fluidity and interrelatedness of agency, intentions, and perceptions – which contribute to a more nuanced acknowledgement of emerging spatial and aesthetic tactics and strategies of citizenship for reappropriation of the urban public space – have not yet been adequately addressed. Drawing on de Certeau’s understanding on ‘the procedures of everyday creativity’ and the more recent studies of ‘vernacular creativity’, I propose further examination of ‘socially engaged creativity’. Employed as a multilevel analysis together with ‘socially engaged art’, it seeks to facilitate a closer examination of these often open-ended processes which are not necessarily preconceived or perceived as ‘art’. More importantly, it highlights how these creative practices aspire to provide sites for sharing, learning, and participation to enhance awareness of socio-political and cultural issues by citizens – even beyond social movements – and how (re)constructing citizenship and socio-political participation in the public space can build towards social transformation. This new framework hopes to broaden out the predominant discourse on ‘socially engaged art’ as a project initiated and led by artists by placing the focus on creative co-authoring of the space by citizens. Through an in-depth analysis of the Lennon Wall Hong Kong, co-authored in 2014, this paper has a twofold aim: to call for a more inclusive and detailed approach to examine the varied aspects of agency, intentions, and perceptions that constitute the partially overlapping range between ‘socially engaged art’ and ‘socially engaged creativity’; and to promote a more critical investigation of ‘artification’ processes.

KEYWORDS:

• Socially engaged creativity
• socially engaged art
• social movements
• co-authorisation of space
• artification
• citizenship

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank all the artists, activists, and scholars who have generously shared their insights, experiences and support during the past years and hence made this research possible. A round of thanks is also due to the peer reviewers whose comments and questions inevitably facilitated the crystallization of ideas.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Geolocation information

This paper examines the Lennon Wall Hong Kong, created and currently maintained in Hong Kong.

Notes on contributor

Dr Valjakka joined ARI as Research Fellow in January 2017 and she is currently a Senior Research Fellow in the Asian Urbanisms cluster. In January 2020, she will return to University of Helsinki as Senior Lecturer in Art History. Dr Valjakka received her PhD in Art History (2011) from the University of Helsinki. In the following year, she was awarded with a-three-year Postdoctoral Research fellowship by the Academy of Finland, which enabled her to commence an interdisciplinary research on alternative artistic and creative practices in urban public space of East Asian cities. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and photographic documentation, Dr Valjakka examines the complexities of the reciprocal relationship between urban creativity and the city. Her published and forthcoming works examine a range of questions including the interdependence of urban creativity with social movements, urbanization, gender, geopolitics and translocal mediations.

Notes

1 The practical details and personal data of the initiators vary to some extent in different sources, and in some cases pseudonyms are used. Usually one or two social workers are named as the initiators of the project, but in an interview with one of the six core ream members, J. Lee (personal communication, 3 Sep 2017) emphasized their collective agency. For a brief description, see Law (2016), and compare with, e.g. Umbrella Terms (n.d.) and Ng (2014).

2 A wealth of materials is made available by local and international media, along with individuals and communities in social media. See, for instance, Hong Kong Lennon Wall Map (2019), Lennon World (2019), the original Facebook page, Lennon Wall Hong Kong ([2014] 2019), and the newly set up version, Lennon Wall Hong Kong (2019).

3 For an illuminating historical outline, see Umbrella Revolution Timeline (2015).

4 The literal translation of the question is ‘Why do we stand out?’ (我哋點解企出嚟 Wodi dian jie qi chu li?)

5 Intriguingly, also in late October 2014, a group of local art students painted over the original John Lennon Wall in Prague as an art project, declaring that the ‘wall is over’. The action was condemned as vandalism instead of ‘art’, and the wall quickly gained new interventions (CBCnews 2014). The wall has gradually been painted again, and in 2019, also with supportive messages for Hong Kong.

6 The three occupation sites clearly differed from each other in terms of the participants’ social background and behavioural patterns, as well as the activities and structures employed to reclaim and maintain the space. Information drawn from the author’s site observations in November 2014.

7 On their Facebook page, established on 6 October 2014, the group clarified their purpose: the Movement had been mocked as a ragtag carnival, so it was time to ask the people what they stood up for, to create a wall that would clearly make known the real goal of the Movement – genuine universal suffrage. See the about section, on Lennon Wall Hong Kong.

8 The group launched a digitalization project of the notes, and established a website, Lennonwall.com, to display the images around mid-October. The website was hacked a couple of times and after around two weeks the group decided to cease maintaining it because of limited resources (A. Tang, personal communication 1 Sep 2017, J. Lee, personal communication 3 Sep 2017).

9 Although the Lennon Wall Facebook page advocated the main aim of the project and provided a platform to share information, the page had surprisingly few postings. The call for volunteers to aid in the preservation project seems to have become one of the most important uses of the page.

10 The summary of the perceptions is also based on dozens of informal and anonymous discussions with the contributors and volunteers of the Lennon Wall during and after the movement by the author.

11 Even among the graffiti writers and street artists, tagging and painting at the occupation sites were strongly discouraged; other practical forms of support were advocated and taken upon.

12 For the messages and further information, see Add Oil Team (2014).

Additional information

Funding

The different phases of fieldwork and research before, during and after the Umbrella Movement in autumn 2014, were made possible by the financial support of the Academy of Finland (2012–2015): the International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden University (2015–2016); the Finnish Cultural Foundation (2016); and the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore (2017–2019).