HONG KONG

As Time Goes By, History Is Fantasised
Design Trust: Critically Homemade 2020

Project Type: Installation

Status: Completed in SEP 2020

“As Time Goes By, History Is Fantasised” is a snow globe about the lost history of the first colonial building in Kowloon, and a device that explores the duality between history and fantasy. Little is known about the exact story of this building, it was likely a police station for a small garrison of Chinese and Indian police officers between the 1860s and the 1880s. The castle-like outlook of the building was a loud proclamation of its European identity, one that matched its role as one of the first colonial foot-hold in the recently acquired territory of Hong Kong, and contrasted with the Chinese style yamen (衙門) of the Kowloon Walled City.
 

As the viewer gaze at the falling glitters, the passage of time is materialised and compressed within the snow globe, while the building’s lost history is being fantasised in the viewer’s mind.