Hong Kong's famously commercial, light-saturated nightscape is set to be disrupted by the famously uncommercial medium of video art when the much-anticipated museum of contemporary visual culture, enigmatically titled M+, opens in early 2021 as part of the West Kowloon cultural precinct.
The building, designed by Pritzker-winning studio Herzog and de Meuron, features a thin transparent tower set into a solid, horizontal platform. The tower looks like a screen, and by night its 110 x 65 metre LED facade will light up with newly commissioned works of video art.
Audiences will be able to watch the screen from the other side of the harbour on Hong Kong island, almost 2 kilometres away.
It is an appropriately contemporary design for a museum with a name that is symbolic rather than explanatory (the "m" stands for museum, and the plus-sign for more, or beyond) and a curatorial vision that puts Asia at the centre.
When the M+ building is complete, it will be one of the largest contemporary art museums in the world, boasting a 65,000 square metre footprint with 15,000 square metres of gallery space.
Its collections will span 20th and 21st century visual art, design, architecture and moving image.
"[And] our roots in Hong Kong inform our voice. We're interested in looking at the histories that intersect with our region."
Raffel took up the position in 2016 after positions at QAGOMA, where she led the Asia-Pacific Triennial, and AGNSW, where she spent 3 years as director of collections and deputy director.
Sydney will get a glimpse into the museum's vast moving image collection when The Hidden Pulse, a collaboration between M+ and the Sydney Opera House, opens on May 29 as part of Vivid LIVE.
The M+ moving image collection currently holds over 400 works, including Tracey Moffatt's Mother (2009) and Daniel Crooks's space-time-bending view of Hong Kong, Static No. 23 (Revolve) (2017).
The Hidden Pulse program has been put together by Opera House contemporary art curator Sarah Rees and M+ curator of moving image Ulanda Blair, who previously held positions at ACMI and Next Wave.
"Ulanda and I had a crossover in curatorial interests," says Rees. Knowing M+ had a unique collection of moving image, she proposed a collaboration.
"With the Opera House established and M+ just being built, it makes sense for both institutions.
Screening program
The Hidden Pulse will present moving image work that explores music and performance by artists who for the most part, and often despite international success, haven't had a high profile in Sydney.
Ticketed sessions include a double bill by Charles Atlas, including dance spectacular From an Island Summer (1983-84); Wu Tsang's short exploration of the origins of New York house music, Into a Space of Love (2018), with the artist in conversation; and the Australian premiere of up-and-coming Chinese filmmaker Cheng Ran's dreamlike silent film Miraculous Trajectories (2019), with a live score performed by electronic musician Shao Yanpeng.
On the weekend of June 1-2, M+ will present four free screening sessions of video art from the M+ collection and beyond, including works by Turner Prize winner Martin Creed, Angelica Mesiti (Australian artist at the Venice Biennale this year), Camille Henrot, Vietnam's Propeller Group, and South Korea's Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries.
These sessions will be themed (The Pulse of the City; The Pulse of History; The Pulse of Culture; The Pulse of Language) and be accompanied by panel discussions featuring local and international curators and artists.
"We were interested in bringing together a range of contemporary moving image artworks from across the world that are affecting and bold in their exploration of contemporary reality," says Blair.
Many of the works challenge established historical narratives and propose alternatives, giving audiences the opportunity to look at the challenges of our moment in an emotionally cathartic way.
"The works dispense with straightforward storytelling to expand the way in which we experience moving image, performance and music." Blair explains.
A museum for today and the future
While the museum's LED façade speaks to Hong Kong's futuristic reputation, the building's design is also cognisant of the past, with parts of the exterior tiled in a pattern that subtly evokes the structure of bamboo.
Inside, an angular cutaway will break up the symmetry of the wide horizontal plinth, bringing in light and vertical views.
Specially designed galleries will allow audiences to see curators preparing for exhibitions.
"And as a museum design, so interesting."
Once complete, its generous gallery spaces will be a revelation for densely built Hong Kong.
In the meantime, M+ has already begun to transform the local cultural scene with an active program of mobile exhibitions.
The projects, begun in 2012, have been diverse.
Mobile M+ has transformed the undeveloped park around the M+ site into an inflatable sculpture park and presented site-specific installation exploring the narratives of Hong Kong's Yau Ma Tei district.
The M+ Pavillion, a temporary exhibition space behind the main building site, has exhibited Isamu Noguchi's design in dialogue with work by Danh Vo, and is currently showing work by five female artists whose work is site-based and environmental, including Ana Mendieta and May Fung.
The Hidden Pulse is a further iteration of this flexible, collaborative approach, and the selection of works encapsulates the museum's desire to reframe the way Asian art is exhibited in relation to work from Europe and North America.
An Asian centre
Blair describes the museum's geographical focus as a series of "concentric circles", with Hong Kong at the centre.
"We're looking at the world from the perspective of Asia, so we have a strong collection of work from our region," she says.
"And we have a strong collection of works from other parts of the world that speak to this global moment."
Core acquisitions include over 1400 works of contemporary Chinese art donated by Swiss collector Uli Sigg (formerly Ambassador to China), including works by well-known artists like Ai Weiwei, as well as important works by lesser-known artists.
The Sigg collection tells a nuanced and sophisticated story about the history and development of modern and contemporary Chinese art.
"His approach to collection-building was methodical — historical, broad and curious about everything," says Raffel.
One of the things she is most excited about is the prospect of introducing artists that audiences may not be familiar with.
"Over a period of three years we will be introducing artists and works that are very unknown, even now, and that is very exciting."
The museum will also collect work from other parts of the world, reframing their usual exhibition context to bring to light the global connectedness of ideas and forms.
In 2017, M+ acquired a 101-item-strong collection of Marcel Duchamp's readymades, designs and publications, spanning the years 1917-1968. Duchamp was an instrumental figure for Chinese artists during the 1980s and 90s, who used his work to develop their own conceptual approach.
Showing Duchamp beside the Chinese artists he influenced provides an alternative perspective on European modernism.
"We represent him from this part of the world, so that's another expression of how we will be such a unique museum."
History reframed
Alternative perspectives, hidden narratives and untold histories connect the works included in The Hidden Pulse.
Having just won Venice Biennale's coveted Golden Lion with The White Album (2019), Arthur Jafa's appearance will be a hot ticket.
Jafa will be in conversation with Sydney Biennale artistic director Brook Andrew on 30 May, following a screening of his 8-minute mash-up on contemporary African-American life: Love is the Message, the Message is Death (2016).
Blair describes the work as "a crucible of human emotion and an incredibly powerful manifesto on human relations."
Another view shifting work is Stan Douglas's fictional documentary Luanda-Kinshasa (2013), which will play on a loop in the Opera House Drama Theatre from May 29-June 1.
The 6-hour loop documents a fictional jazz funk band as they record an album in a reconstruction of the Columbia 30th Street studio, where Miles Davis's Kind of Blue was recorded in 1959.
With Jean-Luc Godard's experimental Rolling Stones documentary Sympathy for the Devil (1968) as a key reference, Luanda-Kinshasa's freewheeling, improvisational mix of afro, funk and jazz sounds unfurl in glorious Eastmancolor-like blues, oranges and yellows.
"You can walk in and out at any time and experience it for as little or as long a time as you like," says Rees.
And if you can't usually afford the usual price of ticket for a performance in the Drama Theatre, it's a chance to experience one of Sydney's famous spaces.
"Previously, people haven't had the opportunity to just walk into the theatre, so I hope that's something that is well received."
