“...before the Handover, the Chinese government promised Hong Kong 50 years unchanged. Everybody thinks this is a great thing. But actually I’m not that sure. It’s very hard to preserve something while the rest of the world is changing. So in fact, when you look at Hong Kong today, you feel that the promise actually could be a curse because the rest of the world, even China, keeps changing...” -- Wong Kar-wai
Returning to Hong Kong after three years, I was struck by its paradoxical stillness amid motion—a city defined by the post-Handover promise of “50 years unchanged,” embodying both preservation and stagnation. This tension inspired my shift from digital to analog film, a medium that mirrors Hong Kong’s fixed yet functional state. By transferring digital compositions to film, I created tangible records of this temporal dissonance. The custom projector completes this dialogue, allowing these fixed moments to be continuously reactivated, just as Hong Kong’s unchanging streetscapes persist within a rapidly changing world.
This trip after three years brings me the uncanny stillness of the city’s resistance to change over time. It reminded me of my very first tour to Hong Kong with my parents back in 2010. Luckily I found the photos from back them and put it aside my recent photos, which confirmed my feeling and provoked my meditation on Hong Kong’s post-Handover condition.
This realization led me to transfer Unfamiliar Familiarity from digital to analog film - a medium that, like Hong Kong itself, exists in a state of both preservation and fixity. By transferring my synthesized digital compositions onto film, I created a material record of my experience, capturing not just visual dynamics but the temporal dissonance that defines contemporary Hong Kong. Through a DIY development at home, I hosted myself a ritual of chemical and poetic alchemy, where memories crystallize in the blackbox, suspended between transformation and permanence.
The custom-designed film projector completes this dialogue between past and present. With double film spool driven by stepper motors, it recreats the dynamic motion from static films, allowing these fixed moments to be continuously reactivated and recontextualized, much like Hong Kong’s unchanging streetscapes continue to function amid a rapidly changing world.
