Inspired by the US’ Aids Memorial Quilt, Hong Kong art project lets visitors remember the dead by playing birdsong in a multisensory garden
- Hong Kong art project Memorial Birdsongs comprises a library of songs from nearly 200 birds, which play through speakers hidden in bird boxes in a mall garden
- Visitors choose a song, hear it played, and receive a memento comprising the song, their loved one’s name, and a copy of an artist’s painting of the bird
Tucked away on the eighth floor of the sprawling K11 Musea shopping centre on Hong Kong’s Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront, the Nature Discovery Park has been transformed into a multisensory, inclusive site for remembering the dead.
An art project, “Memorial Birdsongs” invites members of the public to commemorate loved ones with a choice of birdsong selected from an online library of nearly 200 local and international species.
The chosen song will be played through one of 52 speakers installed inside bird boxes placed around a beautifully tended garden.
Visitors can download a digital memento containing the song, the name of the person being remembered, and a copy of an exquisite, hand-drawn ink and watercolour painting of the bird in question – the work of City University of Hong Kong (CityU) graduate Li Changan.
The sunny weather on its opening day was befitting of an event more celebratory than mournful.
The azure harbour in the background, bejewelled with sailing boats, looked particularly picturesque, and the garden was alive with real-life sparrows and bulbuls, drawn to the green oasis of herbs and flowers well above the hordes of tourists visiting Hong Kong during mainland China’s “golden week” holiday.
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Hessels originally tried to bring panels from the Aids Memorial Quilt in San Francisco to Hong Kong, as per Gay Games tradition, and to have a wall where members of the public could add names of loved ones who had died.
In the end, the opportunity to bring the quilt panels over did not arise, but he still wanted to find a way for people to mourn publicly without fear of retribution.
“Each time [the quilt was] shown, people could post names of additional lost loved ones on a wall. I’m not sure that’s possible any more.
An artist himself, Hessels decided to create an inclusive art project together with local curator and new-media art producer Zoe Chan that allows anyone or any group to experience a sense of community, and which is “impossible to poison with hate”.
“Community healing is a soft heritage in nearly every culture in the world. People form rituals or sites to come together to recover, strengthen. Now there are fewer of these because they are at risk [of being] co-opted by hateful messages. But if we’re not healing together, we’re holding our pain alone.”
The project also illustrates the coming together of traditional art and digital technology. Li’s paintings of the nearly 200 birds amount to a digital database for a project that can be scaled and presented anywhere in the world, or simply hosted online.
Participants can create their digital memento on a website designed by Hong Kong studio MetaObjects without visiting the garden in K11 Musea.
The mood was more celebratory than sombre on opening day because a teenager was having her birthday party there at the same time – essentially helping to illustrate the cycle of life.
On October 11, members of the public are invited to an eight-hour “choir” performance featuring all the submitted birdsongs, with free visits offered hourly by registration.
