Oculus power! arts and technology’s mediation of postcolonial neoliberal nationalism in Hong Kong

Abstract

In the Hong Kong Chief Executive’s 2020 Policy Address, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Government implemented strategies to integrate arts and technology as a new trend in cultural development. With the co-existence of a governmental initiative in ‘arts and technology’ (‘arts tech’) development and the rapid advancement of new technologies, it is frequently seen that new technologies (e.g., virtual reality [VR] and augmented reality) have been widely adopted in interactive media art productions in Hong Kong. Drawing on ethnographic research on a commercial virtual event, and a VR theatre performance produced by a Hong Kong cross-media creative studio, this study unveils discrepancies existing between government officials, commercial marketers, and art creators, ranging from objectives to practices in applying technologies to virtual art production. The juxtaposition of a market-driven commercial virtual campaign and the Chinese nationalist agenda embodied in the government-funded arts tech project reflects how the socio-historical background and changing political situation in Hong Kong extends its postcolonial neoliberal nationalism (PNN) to the arts tech arena. The contribution of this paper is two-fold: first, by adopting ‘China as method’ as epistemological analysis, the mediation of PNN by arts tech explains a ‘southbound imaginary’ in Hong Kong’s arts and cultural practices through a changing relationship between Hong Kong and mainland China. Second, in contrast to the current scholarship focusing on human governance in the formation of neoliberal nationalism, this paper underscores the ‘power’ of techno-cultural material in mediating the neoliberal nationalism of Hong Kong, after its reversion to China, through arts tech development.