United in Creativity: Nuria Kramer and Yeung Yang
Moving to Hong Kong about 6 months ago, Ms. Nuria Krämer (Head of Connecting Space Hong Kong) has gradually discovered the city from very personal points of view of the artists she met on the way.
“I really would like to encourage Hong Kong people and artists to keep on doing as they did until now. Go on with this respectful, but very self-confident way to express the visions of a possible future society in Hong Kong,” she says.
She believes that artists have the capacity to capture and give form to continuously complex changing settings — and artists’ roles regarding recent events in Hong Kong have been indispensable.
“The power of art is to take into the frame of experience what otherwise is difficult to grasp. The value of art could therefore be seen in the creation of settings where these forms can conflict, provoke discussion and be experienced.”
“We need to render explicit our differences and understandings, in order to move the debate further in a fruitful way.”
Dr Yeung Yang (Founder and executive director of soundpocket; supporter of Art Citizens) believes that for such a movement to be possible, artists in their double capacities as citizens and artists would already have contributed prior to it: for striving to be in the world in more vibrant ways, for sharing ideas, skills and tasks, for seeking the truth in their art, and for insisting that we keep imagining possible lives, possible worlds that are to survive us.
She recalled the remark by independent curator Simon Njami that artists share a quality of silence as their inner language which would allow different background of artists and visions of the world to appear. And these are the supporting acts that may not be visible in the ‘space of appearance’ in the political actions (Judith Butler citing Hannah Arendt in Bodies in Alliance and Politics of the Street), but immanent as ways that artists are free.
“Artists could lend their sensitivity to the aesthetics of the politics by identifying it, and offering understanding, interpretation and articulation. Their capacity in attending to details is vital to our appreciation of the grain and rhythm of human action.
(The above quotes reflect the personal opinion of the interviewees and not the stance of their respective organisations.)
