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Busy Hands (2019)

Busy Hands is an ongoing artistic research project that examines an international exchange education program between Hong Kong and the Philippines during the 60s. The program aimed to gather leaders from labour and trade unions from Asian countries, it served as a platform for labour education, sharing information and knowledge production. The project explores the dynamics of Hong Kong’s participation in the program, which catalyzed or supplied momentum for the subsequent social movement in the colony, the Hong Kong 1967 Leftist Riots.

The phrase “Busy Hands” was found on the education program pamphlet published by The Asian Labor Education Center (ALEC), University of the Philippines (UP). In order to promote the program officially, copies of the pamphlet were sent to selected Asian countries (one copy is currently in holdings at Hong Kong Public Records Office). Hong Kong had been invited since the 1st session and later joined the 4th session in 1961. “Busy Hands” refers to the phenomenon of overworked labour
due to underdeveloped labour welfare, unionism and affiliated law; on the other hand, the project title metaphorizes various visible and invisible intervention that preached ideologies and initiated social movement during the tumultuous times.

The exhibition features an early stage of the research-in-progress.

Publication

Publication: “Busy Hands”

Busy Hands (2019)

Lee Kai Chung performs artistic research on the entanglement of geopolitics, coloniality and its affective fallout.

In his early years, Lee was inspired by the lack of proper governance over public records, then he develops his archival research methodology as his key artistic practice. Through research, social participation and engagement, Lee’s work resonates with historical narratives, which demonstrates that individual gesture as a transition between politics and art.

In 2017, Lee initiated a hexalogy of consecutive practice-led research projects under the theme of Displacement– based on the understanding of human migration and material flow in the shadow of the colonial matrix of power, the projects scrutinise the agency of Displacement, expand the perception of the notion to affective, anachronic, transgenerational and geopolitical aspects of human conditions entangled in Eurasian problematics.

The Mountains and the Phantoms research-based series decipher the political and (post)colonial dimension of the natural environment in East Asia, drawing attention to its presence, self-healing and disaster that could resolve or exacerbate the devastating effects of geopolitical power struggles. The series includes the following projects- Can’t Live Without (2017), For Whom the Bell Tolls (2017), The Cold Mountain (2022-) and The Longing Park (TBC).

Lee’s ongoing research project Archive of the People addresses the political standing of documents and archives in the social setting. In 2016, Lee established the collective ‘Archive of the People’, which serves as an extension of his personal research to collaborative projects, education and publications.

In collaboration with curator Shen Jun, Lee founded stepbackforward.art and The Phantom Archives in 2020 and 2022 respectively: the former is an online platform collecting artist archives, fragmented thoughts and artist methodology; the latter extends Lee’s Displacement series to a public domain, constituting an online archives that embraces public participation.

Lee was awarded the Consortium for the Humanities and the Arts Southeast England (CHASE) doctoral studentships from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), and the 18th Busan International Video Art Festival <Selection 2024> prize in 2024; Honourable Mention in Sharjah Biennial 15 and Taoyuan International Art Award respectively in 2023; The Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography from Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology of Harvard University in 2022, he received Altius Fellowship from Asian Cultural Council in 2020; the annual Award for Young Artist (Visual Arts) from Hong Kong Arts Development Council in 2018, and WMA Commission (Transition) in 2017.

Keywords:
Coloniality, Affect, Displacement, Artistic Research, Archives

e: kaiclee13@gmail.com