Period
2016
Proposed by
Nora Razian
Location
Hong Kong
About the project
Concluding a one-year residency at Spring Workshop, HK Farm (a collective that I am part of) and a group of contributors, created and distributed 100 boxes that contained The HK FARMers’ Almanac 2014-2015. Following the Almanac, my practice has focused on Insurrectionary Agricultural Milieux, emancipatory farming practices in the global neoliberal era.
Social practice and research have included: producing publications relating to a land squatting movement in Ma Shi Po Village (Hong Kong, 2016); co-organising two jackfruit festivals with Wang Chau villagers and the Wang Chau Greenbelt Concern Group (Hong Kong, 2017 and 2018); farming with the homeless community who were previously evicted from Miyashita Park (Tokyo, 2017); critical cartography and sharing organic seeds with tribals in Aarey forest, partly under development for the new metro line (Mumbai, 2018); visiting and sharing publications at Grow Heathrow, an occupation resisting the third runway (London, 2018); and participating wherever possible at the ZAD (Zone à Défendre) an autonomous farmland (Notre-Dame-des-Landes, 2018).
My methodology includes participation and working on the land. Creative practices are often serendipitous, but gain urgency when facing land injustice. For example, the Wang Chau Jackfruit Festival came from a gathering between villagers and land protectors who thought of ways to raise awareness of the village and the hegemonic government development plan in creative and engaging ways.
Following such events, I often write and share bottom-up practices in the form of making zines to sharings at alternative geography conferences (Hong Kong and Daegu, 2016 and 2018). This year I started my PhD research on the creative practices that happen in the aforementioned places and those mapped in a Graph Commons.
Links
External links
About the artist
I am an artist/designer, urban farmer and visiting lecturer, originally from London and now living in Hong Kong. I came to HK in 2009 to complete a Masters in Design and started to practice urban beekeeping. This was my entry point into local agricultural issues and has since evolved into my Ph.D. research relating to Insurrectionary Agricultural Milieux. I teach social practice (MA) at Hong Kong Baptist University. A recent text titled, Part-time Pedagogies reflects on my teaching methodology.
