Creative Economies

Curated by Christoph Weckerle, Simon Grand

and Desmond Hui

Architect and architectural historian Desmond Hui is currently Non-Executive Director of the Urban Renewal Authority in Hong Kong and Managing Director of Culture and Development Consultancy Ltd. He holds a Visiting Professorship at University of Hong Kong and an Adjunct Professorship at the Hong Kong Institute of Education. Hui is a member of the International Committee of Architectural Critics. He was the Lead Curator for the Hong Kong Exhibition of the 11th International Architecture Exhibition of Venice Biennale in 2008 and Co-Curator in 2012.

Invitees:

Prof. Ou-fan Leo Lee

Prof. Lee is currently Sin Wai Kin Professor of Chinese Culture at The Chinese University of Hong Kong and was formerly teaching at Harvard University, Chicago University, UCLA and Princeton. He has published nearly 20 books of cultural criticism in Chinese and English, including (in English) City Between Worlds: My Hong Kong (Harvard University Press, 2008) and Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930-1945 (Harvard University Press, 1999). He was co-curator of the Hong Kong delegation selected to participate at the Venice Biennale in 2008.

Agnes Lin

First working as an editorial assistant at the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, Agnes Lin started to work in merchandising and soon established her own merchandising business Osage Merchandising. Since 2005, when Lin opened the first Osage gallery space Soho, Osage has extended into the industrial gallery space in Hong Kong at Osage Kwun Tong, followed by Osage Singapore and Osage Beijing. The non-profit organisation Osage Art Foundation, established in 2004, stands for Lin’s commitment to improve the exchange between art and society by broadening cultural awareness and participation in artistic endeavours.

Vincent Ng

Vincent Ng is an award winning architect, urban designer and founder of AGC Design. His portfolio covers a diverse range of commercial and institutional architecture. He was the executive architect for Zaha Hadid in Hong Kong during the development of Innovation Tower at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Ng is active in public services and has been serving many Government Advisory Boards, particularly in areas of harbourfront planning, environmental protection and urban renewal. He is currently President of the The Hong Kong Institute of Architects .

Pi Li

Pi Li is the Sigg senior curator at M+ Hong Kong. The M+ Sigg collection – an extraction from Swiss collector Uli Sigg’s collection – is universally recognised as the largest, most comprehensive and important collection in the world of Chinese contemporary art from the 1970s to the present. Pi Li lectured at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing and is a Co-Founder of the Boers-Li Gallery in Beijing. He was on the curatorial team of Mediacity Seoul 2006 at SeMA, the Seoul Museum of Art, and has curated a number of museum shows.

Douglas Young

Trained architect Douglas Young co-founded Hong Kong-based retail brand company Goods of Desire (G.O.D) in 1996. Starting with a small shop, G.O.D. has grown into an established lifestyle brand selling home furnishings, fashion and accessories inspired by Hong Kong’s culture at six different locations. Amongst the brand’s collaborators are Starbucks and Coca Cola.

Danny Yung

Yung attended the University of California at Berkeley where he obtained a bachelor’s degree in architecture. Later on, he earned a master’s degree in urban design at Columbia University. Returning to Hong Kong in the late 70’s, he has been devoting himself to all aspects of the arts ever since – particularly theatre, cartoon, film and video, visual and installation art. Yung is a founding member and Co-Artistic Director of Zuni Icosahedron, a Hong Kong-based international experimental theatre company. He is also Chairperson of the Hong Kong Institute of Contemporary Culture and Board Member of the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority. His works have been presented in over 30 cities across Europe, the US and Asia.

and Frédéric Martel

Martel is a french senior researcher and writer based in Paris. He has a PhD in Social Sciences and four master degrees in Law, Political science, Philosophy, and Social Science. He has been «visiting scholar» at Harvard and taught at Sciences Po Paris and at the HEC’s Business School MBA in Paris. He is the author of nine books, including On Culture in America (Gallimard, 2006) and the best-seller Mainstream : On the Global War on Culture and Medias (Flammarion, 2010, translated in twenty countries).

Further information: Connecting Spaces