Dear Arts Development Council,
3-9-12
Recently in the SCMP there was an article written by Vivienne Chow about an upcoming award for local arts critics. I was at first very excited to hear that someone was trying to acknowledge the hard work that writers do to help the art community. But then I read the details. Apparently, the only people who are eligible to win this award are people who write in Chinese.
Now, I get that maybe the council wants to encourage more Chinese language journalists into the world of art criticism. As an artist in town I've always found it incredibly difficult to get Chinese language based press to my events. But I don't believe that the solution to a lack of criticism in this town is an award only for Chinese people.
One of the points in the article was about the lack of interest of critisism in this town. This couldn't be further from the truth. Hong Kong audiences are smart and enjoy reading reviews on local work. I believe the best coverage of the arts in town is created by local writers on the internet. Bloggers in this town have found a gap in the coverage and felt the need to cover it themselves.
Due to constraints with press deadlines traditional print media's coverage of the arts is suffering but this doesn't mean that English critics should be ineligable for the award. I think that the award needs to just look a little further than HK Magazine or the SCMP for well done English language based criticism in town. Just google it and you'll open your world up to hundreds of artists in town writing about being artists in Hong Kong. Anything from Satoshi Kyo's highly intellegent music and theatre blog, to Artists in Hong Kong and their wonderful coverage of the local visual art scene and things like HK Blogs Review that actually review the art blogs themselves for quality control. I don't agree with Oscar Hing-Kay's statment about a "lack of platform". After all, I help run a platform and so do several other bloggers. Can you see us Mr. Hing-Kay? I know we look scary in our unusual clothing choices and coffee driven 2am postings but I promise we don't bite...unless provoked.
The arts should be about inclusion, not exclusion. After all, we call this town "Asia's World City"! What kind of world city do we live in where we promote the melting pot but only give awards to one section of the population? This isn't America-la... I think Mr. Batten says it perfectly in the article when he states, "By denying the importance of English, it makes Hong Kong's art seem parochial." I know my English isn't as classy as Mr. Batten's but I think this award makes the ADC look like xenocentric assholes.
(And here's the article in case you missed it!)
Comments
julie
Kevin Kwong doesn't review hardly anything anymore! I saw a review for Cinderella the other week and a preview for Gay Italian Wedding. Why give press to shows that are already sold out? SCMP is so overblown... I trust internet sources way more nowadays
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