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Urban Matters Yerevan. The Past and Present Rethought
Teresa Leung (Hong-Kong)
multimedia installation- Scripting Yerevan Experience: A mini travel guide (A 4 printed manual), 2014
- The Night Scene Photo Exchange (Yerevan-Hong-Kong), 2014
- Some great things to do at the drained Fountains (video, 3’:47’’), 2014
- Walk in the dark (video, 2’:18’’), 2014
Modern Art Museum, Yerevan
August 1-6, 2014
Coming from Hong Kong, a highly (and sadly) urbanized place, Teresa Leung is fascinated by true darkness at night and interested in partially-abandoned public structures in the Armenian capital. Her project ‘Playgound Yerevan’, reflects her preferred approach in observing and reflecting on urban fabrics. Based on walks through historical districts and non-places, random chats with locals, observation of what people do in public space, and interviews with urban planners, she has created a series of works to explore the possibilities of urban space/sites including those being ignored.
Scripting Yerevan Experience: A Mini Travel Guide
The mini travel guide’s meant for people who want not only to venture outside tourist attractions in Yerevan but also to create and re-imagine their urban experiences.Thus, users don’t have to follow things mentioned in the guide-it’s meant to inspire different ways of perceiving urban space and your unique interaction with it.This guide’d also be useful if you search for some public yet serene spaces to laze around while mulling over your travel experiences. After all, travel isn’t about visiting as many sites as possible. If that rings true to you, this is a guide for you.
Please find the guide online: http://minitravelguideyerevan.blogspot.com
The Night Scene Photo Exchange (Yerevan – Hong-Kong)
The project ‘Night Scene Photo Exchange’ is inspired by the darkness at night I experienced and I’m so fond of here in Yerevan. The project is also an extension of the work (video documentation’s shown in the same exhibition) in which the artist walked in darkness (without any outdoor light source) from the gate of the artist-in-residence site to the artists’ apartment in Bangladesh (the Malatia-Sebastia district). While she kept practicing and improved my walking speed on that path in darkness, she realized that she didn’t have any photo of Hong Kong at night. That’d be handy when she asked why she is excited about darkness at night in Yerevan. As a result, she started to collect Hong Kong night scene pictures through photo exchange. Shown in the exhibition space are Hong Kong night scene photos by Hongkongers and Yerevan night scene photos by an artist Ara Petrosyan and Teresa Leung. For every photo contributed, a Hong Kong photographer picked one photo of Yerevan. Please find the images of the project online
Hong-kong part: http://nightscenephotoxchange.blogspot.com/
Yerevan part: http://yerevannightscenephotos.blogspot.com/?view=flipcard
Some Great Things To Do at The Drained Fountains
Huge drained fountains in Yerevan were once where people gathered and children might go swimming during the hot summer. Without water today, they are still wonderful places to go. Teresa Leung thought of several great things to do there. This is part of her journey to explore possibilities of structures—whether they are abandoned, partially abandoned or unmanaged—in urban areas.
Learning to walk in the darkness
Living in Hong Kong means one hasn’t really experienced true darkness at night in the city, thus Teresa Leung was initially overwhelmed by the complete darkness when walking on the stony path (with steps and different objects on the way) from the gate of the ‘Art Commune’ artist-in-residence site (located in the South-West (Bangladesh) district in Yerevan) to the artists’ apartment. The first few nights she lit her way with the use of her mobile phone, but then she tried to walk without it and found that exciting. The artist started to time how fast she walked in the dark and compare that with her daytime walking speed. This video was shot to reflect the artist’s speed on July 21, 2014—after more than two months of practice. It’s meant to be a reflection on the artist being-raised in a highly urbanized culture f hong-kong where night is synonymous with danger and there must be abundant light to prevent crime and accidents. Brightening up the city of Hong Kong also include numerous neon lights, spotlights, and those never switched off lights in commercial buildings-all these result in light pollution, sleep problem, and energy wastage.
Born and living in Hong Kong, Teresa Leung exhibited her works previously in Bulgaria, Berlin, Hong Kong, Sao Paulo, Spain, Slovenia, and the UK. She was one of the 40 finalists selected from more than 3,100 entries in the Contemporary Talents 2012 competition organized by the Fondation François Schneider in France. Leung graduated in 2011 with an MA degree in Fine Arts from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She explores art-as-responses to urban situations and creates shared-experiences by involving people as collaborators. Most of her recent works reflect her interest in space of urban non-places such as harbor front and highways, its possible functions, and people’s interaction with it.
The exhibition is organized by ACSL in the frame of the ‘Art Commune’ international Artist-in-Residence Program and supported by Yerevan Modern Art Museum and Mekhitar Sebastatsi Educational Complex (MSKH).