Festival Walk, Kowloon Tang
2015 May
The Wandering Scholars is a fluctuating collective based in Hong Kong that seeks to reinvigorate academic and theoretical discourse by taking a more casual approach to the dissemination of knowledge that necessarily involves the general public, the audience, or whatever you choose to call that mind/body that desires to move beyond the consumption of THINGS and onto the consumption and practical application of IDEAS. This is an experimental process that is not geared towards a generalised notion of “success”, but in fact desires your ( all parties and individuals) input in an attempt to move beyond the strictures of amateur and professional, and/or autodidacticism and the university degree.
We organised “2 walks” in May and June 2015 to honor the tradition of “psychogeography” (Guy Debord) as a politicized exploration of city buildings and spaces and way of honoring the Chinese tradition of “taking a walk” (散步) or “sightseeing” to collectively question and lament government policies. This idea is inspired by recent social activism during Umbrella Movement empirically, and the theoretical tradition of Psycho-geography, a method of examining the psychological influence of urban architecture on the individual and the crowd. We’d like to use these walks to reclaim urban spaces, to alter their purpose from commercial to social, and to rename the city as a gigantic “no-man’s land” worthy of the same kind of exploration as those missions that travel to another planet. In doing so, we not only advocate for political freedoms but also for the creative life of the individual and the unfettered intellect of society.
Our teaching group consists of Katrien Jacobs, Ian Fong, Yang Jing, and AndrewGuthrie. All of us were also involved in the event Wandering Scholars, which took place in CUHK in May 2015. (please refer to our website for information on this event http://www.wanderingscholars.com.hk/)
