HKETO, Brussels promotes Hong Kong as a creative and technology hub at European arts, science and technology festival (with photos)

     The Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in Brussels (HKETO, Brussels) has seized the opportunity of a major European arts, science and technology festival featuring a Hong Kong artist, Wong Chi-yung, to promote Hong Kong as a creative and technology hub.

     The International Meeting in Performing Arts and Creative Technologies (IMPACT) Festival, which is funded by the European Union's European Regional Development Fund to foster experimental art, science, technological and industrial collaboration, is being held from November 3 to 20 in five European cities, namely Liège, Hasselt and Eupen in Belgium; Maastricht in the Netherlands; and Aachen in Germany. One of the festival's pillars is IMPACT Lab, an incubator of artistic and technological projects which aims to bring together artists, academic researchers and industrialists to work on a common challenge. This is the first time that the IMPACT Festival has featured a Hong Kong artist. 

     Wong Chi-yung's 20 metre by 5m light installation "To see the world in a grain of sand" was selected by the IMPACT Festival in collaboration with the Hong Kong Arts Centre, and is being exhibited at the Theatre of Liège in Belgium, the Festival's overall co-ordinator, for the duration of the event. HKETO, Brussels is pleased to be one of the main sponsors of the exhibition, which is also supported by the Belgium-Hong Kong Society.  

     The experiential, cross-disciplinary installation concept developed by Wong was conceived as a meditative journey composed of a combination of light, sound and tactile experiences. Visitors are invited to experience their sensations to better communicate with their own thoughts, corporeal rhythms and emotions. 

     Speaking at the opening reception for the exhibition at the Theatre of Liège on November 6 (Liège time), the Deputy Representative of HKETO, Brussels, Miss Fiona Chau, said the exhibition of a creative lighting art installation by an artist from Hong Kong at the IMPACT Festival is a valuable occasion to showcase Hong Kong as an international hub for arts and technology.  

     "Creativity, innovation, arts and culture thrive in our dynamic city. In recent years Hong Kong has become Asia's international arts scene and the world's third largest art market by auction sales, with many galleries, art fairs and festivals. Hong Kong is currently building one of the largest cultural projects in the world, the West Kowloon Cultural District, which stretches across 40 hectares of harbourfront land and will include, among others, a new visual arts museum," Miss Chau said.  

     Miss Chau added that Hong Kong will contribute its capability in scientific and technological research and its institutional strengths and unique advantages under "one country, two systems" to the help develop the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area into an international innovation and technology hub.

     The IMPACT festival will also feature a "Hong Kong meets IMPACT" talk on November 7 during which Wong; the General Manager of the Hong Kong Arts Centre, Ms Connie Lam; and the Artist in Labs Director of Zurich University, Ms Heidi Wiley, will speak about the project and relations between arts, sciences and technologies.