Co-authoring the space: the initial Lennon Wall Hong Kong in 2014 as socially engaged creativity

Abstract

The versatile forms of artistic and creative practices sparked by social movements worldwide are not limited to artists’ intentional aims to create artworks. Instead, most of the mixed-method interventions usually emerge from citizens’ aspirations to support the cause. While the interconnectedness of culture, arts, and social movements is widely acknowledged, the fluidity and interrelatedness of agency, intentions, and perceptions – which contribute to a more nuanced acknowledgement of emerging spatial and aesthetic tactics and strategies of citizenship for reappropriation of the urban public space – have not yet been adequately addressed. Drawing on de Certeau’s understanding on ‘the procedures of everyday creativity’ and the more recent studies of ‘vernacular creativity’, I propose further examination of ‘socially engaged creativity’. Employed as a multilevel analysis together with ‘socially engaged art’, it seeks to facilitate a closer examination of these often open-ended processes which are not necessarily preconceived or perceived as ‘art’. More importantly, it highlights how these creative practices aspire to provide sites for sharing, learning, and participation to enhance awareness of socio-political and cultural issues by citizens – even beyond social movements – and how (re)constructing citizenship and socio-political participation in the public space can build towards social transformation. This new framework hopes to broaden out the predominant discourse on ‘socially engaged art’ as a project initiated and led by artists by placing the focus on creative co-authoring of the space by citizens. Through an in-depth analysis of the Lennon Wall Hong Kong, co-authored in 2014, this paper has a twofold aim: to call for a more inclusive and detailed approach to examine the varied aspects of agency, intentions, and perceptions that constitute the partially overlapping range between ‘socially engaged art’ and ‘socially engaged creativity’; and to promote a more critical investigation of ‘artification’ processes.

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