Artist Statement

9′ 50″, Dual-screen audio-visual work.

Throughout the past hundred years, Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong mostly worked as a community that with military and political function, it maximized the ability of improvisation and compatibility, and finally developed into a huge and comprehensive urban system. The issue of governance of the site which had permitted the unfettered development of these few hectares was finally resolved and the decades of growth ended in 1990s.
Scientist Ray Kurzweil defined the acceleration of development of technology as Law of Accelerating Returns. He reckons that technology is growing exponentially that human could make the progress of the entire 20th century with only 20 years in 21 century, and we are here right before the “explosion”, what will happen decades later might threat all human being.
Having conducted extensive research and interviews on the history of the Kowloon Walled City, the artist utilises these old memories and scientific prediction, and reimagines a fantastical Underground Walled City that evolves into the last defence of human being against artificial intelligence. Through the daring escape of a VOKKALO series artificial intelligence, the conflicts was revealed. Huge data flows between these two gigantic memory systems, how the future world would become? What functions will the Underground Kowloon Walled City have, what progress will it have made? What kind of role will it play between artificial intelligence and human being? Video: Confidential Records trailer

• Qianwen Qu (Vvzela Kook) (b.1990, Hong Kong) is a new media artist who mainly works in audiovisual mediums, including performance, theatre, generative video and drawing. Her audiovisual works combine media with performance; they explore the possibility of coexistence between contemporary performance types, like dance or choreography, and computer-generated new media. Kook’s video works combine technology with her artistic practice to reproduce and convert urban cityscapes into an integrated virtual experience, guiding the audience on a cybernetic journey. The condensed textures in her works connect with multiple sensual levels in our perception and reintroduce the unexplored potential of video as a medium. Kook has participated and shown her works in MoCA Taipei (2019), Tai Kwun (2019), Microwave International Media Festival in Hong Kong (2018, 2016), PuSh Performing Art Festival in Vancouver (2017), Centre for Heritage Arts and Textile (2017), and “89+”program (2012) co-curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Simon Castets. vvzela.co