Research papers

Conference paper, presented at College Art Association Annual Conference, New York, February 12, 2025

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This paper analyzes the documentary "Ballad on the Shore" by Ma Chi-hang, which documents the aural traditions of Hong Kong's Tanka people - traditionally boat-dwelling fishermen now displaced to land. I argue that the Tankas represent a "diaspora-in-situ," dispersed from their aquatic homeland while remaining geographically local. The film initially aimed to preserve their disappearing ballads but ultimately captures a living, transforming culture, and as such it challenges conventional diaspora concepts by showing how the Tankas maintain cultural memory through evolving musical practices rather than nostalgia for a fixed homeland.

Conference paper, presented at AAS-in-Asia, Yogyakarta, July 10, 2024

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​This paper analyzes artist Leung Chi-wo's works about Hong Kong's 1967 riots, contrasting his approach with conventional archival practices like the documentary Vanished Archives. While the documentary seeks to restore missing official records and reconstruct chronological truth, I argue that Leung creates an "unlikely archive" from everyday objects and images that reveal non-spectacular experiences of 1967. Through montage techniques and kinetic sculptures that disrupt linear time, his works challenge imperial temporality and colonial archival logic, proposing an alternative "unruly history" that embraces ambivalence and fragmentation over coherent historical narratives.

Conference paper, presented at "Rethinking Surface", UC Irvine Visual Studies Annual Conference, May 16, 2024

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This paper analyzes the Instagram account "hkurbanrecord," which documents street writing in Hong Kong following the 2020 National Security Law. I argue that while traditional countervisual practices like mass protests have been suppressed, new forms of political expression have emerged through small-scale, inconspicuous street writings that express personal feelings and mutual support. The account creates a "cross-surface assemblage" by moving these writings from urban surfaces to digital screens, constituting a practice of care that maintains community connection and resistance under authoritarian conditions, demonstrating alternative ways of political gathering when physical assembly is prohibited.

Conference paper, presented at Society for Hong Kong Studies Annual Conference, June 17, 2023

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This paper analyzes Law Yuk-mui's multimedia installation Song of the Exile (2022), which explores maritime migration stories centered on the ocean liner Tjiwangi that operated between Australia and the Far East in the 1950s-60s. Drawing on Édouard Glissant's archipelagic thinking, I argue that Law creates a "warm database" by excavating fragments from multiple archives and translating memories into a cacophonous assemblage of videos, sounds, and objects. This approach unmoors Hong Kong from imperial frameworks, reimagining it as an archipelagic entity connected through horizontal maritime relationships rather than vertical colonial hierarchies, proposing alternative geographical imaginaries for understanding the port city.

Research paper (Chinese language), published in o-square (方圓), no. 8, Spring 2021. This piece was commissioned by Art Together, and a shorter version was published on their website. 

Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures, no. 22, 2020. doi:10.20415/hyp/022.e01