Period
2016
Proposed by
Christina Li
Location
Hong Kong
About the project
To explore cultural links with the rest of Asia, Rooftop Institute devised the Asia Seed program, the seeds of this project being groups of Hong Kong adolescents. Interacting with artists from Hong Kong and different Asian countries, these seeds grew more aware of their own culture and its connections with the rest of Asia. Working from the local to the global, their awareness developed into the creation of self-strengthening ties, thus giving the program a transcultural outreach.
Asia Seed combines workshops, involving artists in residence, and overseas art trip made by the participants of the workshops to the country of origin of the artists. Each cycle is based on a specific theme that has been developed in advance through communication with the invited Asian artists and local artists. With this project, Rooftop Institute plays the role of the incubator and emphasizes processes more than outputs. Its mission is twofold. First, with well-established artists as their mentors, young students participate in talks, screening, workshops, field trips, exhibitions, and other activities as immersive learning, it helps cultivate them through non-formal art education outside the formal school system by steeping them into the lives of their community and that of other Asian cultures. Second, to help these artists, already active in socially-engaged art, develop their own practices, producing knowledge through inter-cultural production.
These processes take a variety of formats, from articles in the press and the media to their archiving and documenting into a series of online learning materials compiled as alternative art education references. All this material can be accessed by everyone, and particularly other artists, art educators and socially engaged art practitioners from Hong Kong and the region, on the Rooftop Institute’s website.
The Rooftop Institute is composed of Law Yuk-Mui, Yim Sui-Fong, and Frank Vigneron.
Links
External links
About the artist
Rooftop Institute was founded in 2014 by three artists from Hong Kong. Its mission is to develop a series of imaginings and practices enacted towards the concepts of space, community, learning, and exchange. Rooftop Institute conceived educational programs with accompanying artist-in-residence schemes, their goal being to invite Asian and local artists to conduct artistic research and discussions on contemporary social and cultural issues with topics such as diaspora, borders, and migration.
