Copyright

Michael Leung

Published On

2021-04-29

Page Range

pp. 217-256

Language

  • English

Print Length

39 pages

9. Solidarity Seeds

Situated Knowledges in Bishan Village, Wang Chau Village and Aarey Forest

  • Michael Leung (author)

Between 2015 and 2018, artist-researcher Michael Leung visited three sites – in China, Hong Kong and India – each facing destruction as the result of land development. Leung worked with local farmers and activists on creative projects, with the goal of increasing the visibility of these local land struggles as well as strengthening transnational solidarity. In this chapter, Michael Leung revisits the ‘three seed projects’, as documented in artefacts and photographs, in order to explore what it means to use situated knowledge to enrich existing narratives. He posits a rhizomatic approach to research-creation as embedded within social practice, in which the making of objects – seed packets, critical maps, fictional stories, photographs, zines and other actors – is a generative act, the objects themselves becoming ‘seeds’ that nurture, grow and exchange local knowledge.

Contributors

Michael Leung

(author)
Visiting Lecturer at Hong Kong Baptist University

Michael Leung is an artist/designer, researcher and visiting lecturer. He was born in London and moved to Hong Kong in 2009 to complete an MA in Design. His projects range from collective urban agriculture projects such as The HK FARMers' Almanac 2014-2015 to Pangkerchief, a collection of objects produced by Pang Jai fabric market in Sham Shui Po. Michael is a Visiting Lecturer at Hong Kong Baptist University where he teaches Social Practice (MA). His research focuses on Insurrectionary Agricultural Milieux, rhizomatic forms of agriculture that exist in local response to global conditions of biopolitics and neoliberalism.