home            
chenmo   material/space performance zine/drawing

about

Dissolving...Parking...

Sept-Dec 2023 Studio led by Sony Devabhaktuni at Master of Architecture, HKU

Collaborated Choreographers: Faijai, Gungun
Keywords: Infrastructures, moving bodies, performance, choreography, urban intervention, political ecology





We began with exploring a carpark nestled between Victoria Harbour and an embracing elevated highway - a space permeated by the transience of sounds, people and vehicles in constant motion and speed.

Infrastructure connects the movements of people as conduits, often regarded as transitional spaces with an overriding spatial language of uninterrupted flow facilitating movement. But can we reconsider infrastructure's relationship to time by opening up intervals that introduce pauses and delays?

Collaborating with two choreographers from HKAPA, we improvised spontaneous interactions within this carpark. How might this intuitive encounter with the mundane infrastructure plays together? What perceptions will be sparked on these spaces typically experienced as mere passages?








                                                   























In collaboration with choreography students from the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. On my initial improvisation visits with my partners, gungun and faijai, at one point improvising at the periphery, we were intrigued long shadowed strip created by the facade gradually dissolving as time passed. This ephemeral phenomenon captured our attention.



The phenomena of the ephemeral, dissolving shadow cast by the shifting sun became a driving spatial metaphor for disrupting the Rumsey Carpark's existing spatial and circulatory continuity. 




In the performance the shadow was translated as a projected lightstrip, a “threshold” that gradually dissipates as the two performers release in tension.





I translated this long strip of transient light into a physical "cut" - a void excavated through the center of the carpark's volume. This subtractive gesture carves out a series of floor plates, separating the mass into two discrete spatial volumes while simultaneously opening a new dialogical aperture between the harbourfront and highway.













The two separated volumes become attached to enveloping walls enclosing the atrium void. These walls gradually taper in thickness as they extend towards the harbourfront, their monolithic mass dissolving into thinner apertures. The walls are further punctured by openings that perforate the elevations, opening spontaneous glimpses and visual connections towards the atrium space.

Within this inserted void, a new programmatic proposition is introdued - a mediatèque where projected images animate the void's opposing surfaces. Visitors on either side can look across at each other and the projected images, unscripted visual encounters. New pathways for meandering were also threaded through the void, fragmenting the original vehicular circulation loops into more porous, discontinuous trajectories.