Exhibition
The present in the future is the past

Hong Kong Contribution to the Goethe-Institut's regional project URBAN WALKS

Sat, 04.11.2023 -
Sun, 19.11.2023
Goethe-Gallery & Black Box Studio

Please visit www.goethe.de/urbanwalks for the regional project URBAN WALKS.

Please visit the present in the future is the past - URBAN WALKS for the Hong Kong contribution of the regional project.

The exhibition opens on November 4, 2023 (Sat) with a guided AR-supported Urban Walk.

Exhibition opening hours:
3:00 PM - 8:00 PM (Mon)
10:00 AM - 8:00 PM (Tue - Fri)
9:30 AM - 6:00 PM (Sat)
Closed on Sundays and Public Holidays

URBAN WALKS is a regional project of the Goethe-Instituts in East Asia. It features artistic projects that are experienced by walking through (urban) space, linking them to a specific aesthetic experience or narrative through a variety of digital possibilities. By bundling them on a digital platform, digital windows are created alongside the local, physical art experiences, enabling worldwide access to the projects.

Goethe-Institut Hongkong is pleased to present, further to the digital version, the result of the Hong Kong contribution to the URBAN WALKS project in the exhibition THE PRESENT IN THE FUTURE IS THE PAST produced by the artistic team: RAY LC, CK Fung, Ruishan Wu, Chunlei Gong, Jiayi Su, Chen Li, Bowen Liu and Carman Wong. The exhibition runs from November 4 to 19, 2023 at the Goethe-Gallery and the Black Box Studio.

Artist Statement:
The tangible Cultural Heritage of Hong Kong continues to be eroded, changed by the environment that becomes unpredictable by the day, from conflicts to climate change, from people who care to people who don’t. The tramway we took in our childhood journeying next to the shoreline no longer serves a nostalgic purpose, but rather becomes a party line for the next generation. Our beloved community markets of the past are now malls serving packaged food. To capture Hong Kong’s Cultural Heritage of the present requires more than preservation of the physical entity; it requires preservation of our interpretation of the present, our stories of the moment, our connections to the places that we remember now. THE PRESENT IN THE FUTURE IS THE PAST exhibits Hong Kongers’ and foreign visitors’ expression of their connections and narratives concerning eight Cultural Heritage locations, as well as their imagination of how these sites will be transformed and adapted in the future. This multimedia sculptural, AR, robotic, and AI-generated vision of our current connection to Cultural Heritage will be remembered in the future as a document of the past through our present tense.

Join us in the two accompanying events of the exhibition: 

- AR-supported Urban Walk
- Generative AI Workshop

Learn more about the project: about urban walk – the present in the future is the past (wordpress.com)