The exhibtion of video work by artists from both Hong Kong and Chicago proposes varied looks at the city as site of inspiration, backdrop, and transformation in a time of rapid global change. Both Chicago and Hong Kong art representative of contemporary global cities’ porousness of flows. This exhbition asks how globalization (in its myriad manifestations) contaminates and/or the local. Although the erm “globalization” has been somewhat synonymous with capitalist expansionism, this exhibition wishes to displace this notion by looking at how visual culture has been both instrumental (literally) and antithetical o this characterization. In considering the specificities of the local, artists working in both these cities have much in common but also much that separate and differentiate them. By simutaneously focusing on both the “universiality” and the specifities of the local, Open Cities: HKG><ORD 《開放的都市》wishes to open up spaces in between as sites of contestation as well as identification. Conceptually, the exhibition looks at the social/ personal aspects of globalization and its ramifications as expressed thorugh screen culture and as contained within/by the city. 

Selected artists involved: Mark Chan Kam-Lok (HK), John Di Stefano (USA/New Zealand), Frederic Moffet (Canada/USA), Ellen Pau (HK), Deborah Stratman (USA), Mathias Woo (HK). 

Date: Feburary 16 – March 17, 2001 

Organisation: Betty Rymer Gallery, Para/site, Hanart TZ Gallery, Videotage, Hong Kong Arts Development Council