A Curator’s Memo

A Curator's Memo

Traces and threads on Microtopias

Professor Alvin Yip

Prototyping: marks the first episode of our new exhibition series, a trilogy titled Microtopias, to kick off the Indra and Harry Banga Gallery’s 10th anniversary;
An appropriation of the term (e)utopia, Microtopia intrigues one’s imagination for a better future within a “pocket world”—a sandbox concept I have nurtured since the 2014 Detour exhibition, celebrating microscopic changes, bottom-up actions, improvisational tactics, and the possibilities to leverage and proliferate from the small and niche, such as a university gallery;
By envisioning the “Gallery as Living Lab” and “Exhibition as Social Experiment,” curators strive to examine the best practice for university galleries to effectively serve translational research goals and foster meaningful stakeholder engagement;
Our re-positioning raises pedagogical questions about exhibitions—are they the conclusion or the hypothesis of a research study? Years ago, at CAFA Beijing, I challenged my students with just half a semester to create an exhibit and use the remaining time to articulate its effect and affect. An exhibition is not merely about self-expression or show-and-tell. It could be a mirror of truth, a proof of concept, a record of happenings, an instrument to measure, a pitch for support, a platform for collaboration, a call for action, an agent of advocacy, an interface with industry, a catalyst for change, and so forth…
Participants (not a passive audience per se) here and now become an essential part to “complete” the physical installation in place. Exhibition rooms are turned into immersive, theatrical scenarios, akin to mise-en-scène awaiting actors and angels. Everyone is invited to settle in, sit down, talk aloud, take selfies, make reels, interact, and compose their own stories. Docents don costumes, teachers and students are equipped to craft their own scripts for AI-generated videography. In fact, during the first curatorial briefing, the creative team was tasked to conceive a new “Iron Man’s home” ;
This post-structuralist paradigm of curatorship leads to the design of a more democratised, open-ended, generative experience, radically departing from canonical narrative structure in traditional museums. Neither as black box nor white box, the Gallery extrapolates reality into a “sandbox”—spaces that appear vernacular yet are embedded with singularities, not unlike a scientific controlled experiment.
On the production front, it has been fruitful to co-organise and co-curate the Prototyping: exhibition with the CityUHK Academy of Innovation. The partnership calls for unusual encounters between artists and scientists. Rather than forcefully dismantling departmental silos, the Gallery permits a “third space” for cross-disciplinary projection and knowledge exchange. Throughout the co-creation process for the exhibits, moments of reluctance, discomfort, debate, and misinterpretation arose. Yet, I find these moments most valuable in research;
The Gallery’s interdisciplinarian discourse is dedicated, profound, and strategic. We understand that the convergence of culture and innovation, including Art-Tech, has grown into a pivotal area of inquiry, spanning contemporary scholarship, creative production, civic engagement, and urban development. Knowledge transfer of visualisation and interactive techniques is evidenced not only in social media, digital entertainment, film, and game industries but a broadening spectrum of applications from robotic design to medical imaging … vast potential, in short;
Fusion, crossover, hybridisation, academia-industry joint ventures—Hong Kong’s strengths lie in intercultural, intersectoral, interdisciplinary, and international partnerships. In the midst of developing our cultural capital, cultural entrepreneurship, and a probable cultural economy over the past two decades,¹ we need policy integration not only with tourism (modelled after Chinese Mainland) but synergy with Hong Kong aspiration to be an international innovation and technology centre.² In light of this pursuit, the Prototyping: exhibition also sets the stage for serial salons, convening leading voices across generations in discussion of Hong Kong’s unique innovative culture, as well as opportunities for cultural innovation.

The State Council establishes the Cultural Industry as an integral part of the National Development Strategy (2006), Hong Kong as an East-meets-West centre for international cultural exchange (2021). Prioritised focus including Art-Tech (2020) and Art-Trade (2025) proclaimed in CE’s Policy Address.
The State Council’s 14th Five-Year Plan (2022) supports Hong Kong to develop into an international innovation and technology hub.