A moan from Joann

The ‘Inflatable Wonders’ exhibition takes a nasty turn as Armenian artist Joann weighs in (Standard story here)…

The team behind a Hong Kong art installation mocked by some online users has said it will press ahead with the exhibition despite the artist who inspired the inflatable works saying she wanted the “very ugly” pieces to be removed.

Armenian artist Joann … on Saturday said the “Inflatable Wonders” exhibition was “very ugly”, “not well proportionated” and looked “like an inflatable graveyard”.

“They also did not send me anything for approval, before the exhibition [started],” she told local media. “I don’t like that they launched it without showing the works to me…”

…Joann had told local media that if she had seen the works, she would have helped to make them “more appealing because these ugly lights are making it even worse”.

“I don’t like my name on this ugly exhibition,” she said. “The concept is mine. So I would love it to be [stopped].”

Central Venue Management, which won a government tender in 2016 to organize such events in the location, contradicts her account, saying she had been happy with the arrangements. So – innocent artist mistreated by commercial enterprise in cahoots with bureaucrats, right? But the SCMP story concludes…

Joann is known for her collaborations with luxury brands such as Gucci, Versace, Marc Jacobs, Valentino and BMW.

We all have to eat. We are all prostitutes. But if you hire yourself out to tacky clients with lots of cash to throw around, maybe don’t complain too much about how it looks to everyone else. (Some more of her work – sort of Christo-meets-people-who-put-knitting-on-railings.)

Mitigation as self-criticism continues in the HK47 case, with Joshua Wong and others. I guess after the verdict has been delivered and the next step is sentencing, there’s no point in stating the obvious like ‘they were just trying to win an election’. 

The NatSec Police promise to continue looking for threats…

“Soft confrontation” behaviors have been deterred by the two important national security laws in Hong Kong, but they have gone underground and are waiting for the right moment to resurface, said Andrew Kan Kai-yan, deputy police commissioner for national security.

Kan said that confrontations were deterred by the Beijing-drafted National Security Law and the domestically enacted Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, which was legislated under Article 23 of the Basic Law.

“Street violence and mass demonstrations have nearly vanished, but national security risks will not disappear so easily. We currently face three major national security threats – American and Western intervention, soft confrontation and local terrorism,” Kan said.

…people engaging in soft confrontation will still flirt with the line – using fake news or misinformation to confuse the public, infiltrate their daily lives and engage in subtle confrontation,” Kan warned.

“They will spread their ideology subtly, and once they find the right time, they will start inciting people to stir up trouble.”

Does ‘soft’ or ‘subtle’ mean ‘legal’? What are some examples of it, or of Western ‘intervention’, or ‘local terrorism’? Otherwise, the public have no idea what the NatSec Police are actually referring to. (Surprised no-one has declared people spending money outside Hong Kong to be a form of ‘soft resistance’)