DUSTIN SHUM: XIANGGANG ALIAS HONG KONG
After the expiration of British control in 1997 Dustin Shum, Hong Kong based photographer, started capturing images of his city to see whether or not there were subtle changes happening in “Xianggang” (the Putonghua pronunciation of “Hong Kong”). However, in his own words, this new city is only a place of mind, a sort of “psychological landscape”. “Hong Kong is getting more and more dramatic, sometimes even absurd”, he confirms, “and this chaotic situation can be shown through the artificial topographic landscape built and created by Hong Kong people after 1997.” By trying to explain himself Shum doesn’t hesitate to recall a curious technologic parallelism, a common experience for Mac users: “We Hong Kong people feel that we have created a new Hong Kong, but haven’t we just created an “alias”, an alias named Xianggang?”. An error, as trying to open a long time deleted file.