懷舊霓虹，香港尋找自我身份的隱喻
藝術 2014年06月23日
彌敦道上的霓虹燈。
Frank Costantini and Kirk Kirkpatrick/Hong Kong Sign Book, via South China Morning Post Limited
多年來，香港的霓虹燈標識牌在本土電影中佔有小小的一席之地，它在高志森1986年《痴心的我》當中為天台浪漫戲提供高高的紅色背景，在王家衛1994年的《重慶森林》中為一個嘉寶式神秘人物的金發提供逆光。
現在這些霓虹標識牌有了自己的網絡展覽。
香港最新的視覺藝術與文化展覽館M+最近的臨時展覽上，這些霓虹標識牌成了主角。該館要到2017年才正式開業，成為目前正在建設中的西九龍文化區的一部分。
這是M+的第七個臨時展，不過是它第一次做網絡展覽。該展到6月30日結束，是向霓虹標識牌以及它們在香港的城市風光與想像中的地位致敬，時期從它們的全盛時期——20世紀70到80年代——直至過去十年它們黯然退場，被LED標識所取代。
展覽發佈在NEONSIGNS.HK網站，並持續更新，顯示出M+突破藝術邊界，既放眼全球，又兼顧本土的雄心。網站內容包括照片、文章和幻燈片，由生活工作在香港的作家、藝術家、攝影師和學者提供。一段12分鐘的視頻名為《霓虹標識牌的製作》，其中有若干訪談（粵語對話，英文字幕），走訪了長期製作霓虹標識牌的匠人，帶領觀眾走訪了他們的工作室。
網站還有互動地圖，用戶可以上傳霓虹標識牌的照片和它們所在的位置，作為一種保存消失手工藝的公眾記錄計劃。
在全世界的城市，從巴黎到洛杉磯到紐約，對霓虹燈都有過迷戀到拋棄的過程。但香港的霓虹標識牌是最密集的，或者說只有這裡結合了繁體中文字和英文內容，這次展覽的聯合策展人託拜厄斯·伯格(Tobias Berger)說道
“沒什麼比街頭的霓虹標識更像是香港的符號了，”伯格在電話採訪中說。但它們正在迅速消亡，部分是由於城市的重新建設，部分是由於它們在颱風中可能構成危險。
展覽的舉辦是由於M+挽救了一些這種標識牌，伯格說，它好像霓虹標識的“動物庇護所”。伯格曾是首爾白南淮藝術中心的總策展人，主攻最新的韓國前衛藝術。該博物館取得了若干險些被破壞的霓虹標識，包括香港上環區薩米廚房(Sammy's Kitchen)著名的奶牛形狀標誌。目前它還在協商購買更多。
“如果它們必須消亡，你就可以買下它他們，但是你不能買下所有的，”伯格這樣解釋網上展覽的動機。
在為展覽撰寫的一篇文章中，印刷專家、香港理工大學的助理教授基思·譚（Keith Tam，音譯）介紹了以垂直和水平方式書寫的中英文霓虹標識當初曾經懸掛在建築之外，或環繞建築，遍布所有雜貨店、銀行和飯館，想要吸引註意力，造成“一種成串傾瀉的效果”。
在視頻《霓虹標識牌的製作》中，一位名叫馮小華（Fung Siu Wah，音譯）的書法家揭示了不同行業所青睞的樣式。“有些書法家的風格很誠實，需要注重誠信的企業就會聘用這樣的書法家，”他說，“正骨醫院、武術館和體育俱樂部喜歡魏碑體，給人強壯有力的感覺。”
在視頻《霓虹標識牌的製作》中展示了彎曲霓虹玻璃管的過程，這段視頻是M+展覽的一部分。
West Kowloon Cultural District Authority
另一段短視頻拍攝了《重慶森林》的攝影師杜可風談霓虹燈光的獨特效果：“它比鎢光燈冷……就像妓女和妻子之間的區別。”
他預言霓虹燈還會回潮，就像寶麗來照片和電影膠片一樣。
NEONSIGNS.HK的這次展覽像是一次懷舊，特別是在許多香港人都在擔憂被大陸文化侵蝕的時候。
這個在線展覽自3月21日上線以來，已經有26萬次瀏覽量，其中2/3來自香港本地。
公眾為展覽貢獻了3000張霓虹標識的照片，策展人們正在迅速將它們上傳到霓虹地圖中去。此外，《霓虹標識牌的製作》在YouTube網站上被觀看了11.5萬次。
伯格說公眾的興趣源自一種廣泛的深思：香港自1997年結束英國統治並成為中國的一個特別行政區之後，在世界上究竟處於什麼位置。
“霓虹標識牌這個項目並不是一個反中國的項目，但我覺得它與香港尋找自我身份有關，”他說，“它既是殖民地，又不是殖民地，既是中國，又不是中國。這是一個瘋狂的地方。”
本文最初發表於2014年6月18日。
翻譯：董楠
Hong Kong’s Storied Neon Signs Get a Nostalgic Review
MuseumsJune 23, 2014
Lights on Nathan Road in Hong Kong.
Frank Costantini and Kirk Kirkpatrick/Hong Kong Sign Book, via South China Morning Post Limited
For years, Hong Kong’s neon signs have played bit parts in its cinema, providing a soaring red backdrop for a rooftop romance in Clifton Ko’s 1986 “Devoted to You” or backlighting the blonde wig of a mysterious Garbo-esque figure in Wong Kar-wai’s 1994 “Chungking Express.”
Now the signs are starring in their own show online.
They are the subject of the latest pop-up exhibition by M+, Hong Kong’s new visual art and culture museum, before the museum opens its physical doors in 2017 as part of the West Kowloon Cultural District, now under construction.
This is M+’s seventh pop-up show, but its first online. Running until June 30, it is a tribute to neon signs and their place in the Hong Kong cityscape and imagination, from their heyday in the 1970s and 1980s to their fade-out in the last decade as LED signs took over.
Posted to NEONSIGNS.HK, and updated continuously, it showcases M+’s ambitions to blur artistic disciplines and to be global as well as local. The website includes photos, essays and slide shows by writers, artists, photographers and academics living and working in Hong Kong. A 12-minute video, “The Making of Neon Signs,” features interviews — in Cantonese with English subtitles — with longtime neon sign makers and takes viewers into their workshops.
There is also an interactive map where users can upload pictures of neon signs and their location, as a sort of public documentation project of the vanishing craft.
Around the world, cities from Paris to Los Angeles to New York have fallen in and out of love with neon. But nowhere have the signs been as tightly clustered as in Hong Kong, or with the unique combination of traditional Chinese and English script, said Tobias Berger, the show’s co-curator.
“There are very few things that are more iconic in Hong Kong than these streets of neon signs,” Mr. Berger said in a phone interview. Yet they are fast disappearing, some because of redevelopment and others because they can pose a danger in typhoons.
The exhibition came out of an effort by M+ to save some of these signs, as a sort of “animal shelter” for neon, said Mr. Berger, who was formerly chief curator at the Nam June Paik Art Center in Seoul, dedicated to the late avant-garde Korean artist. The museum has acquired several neon signs in danger of being destroyed — including a famous cow-shaped sign from Sammy’s Kitchen in Hong Kong’s Sheung Wan district — and is in negotiations to buy more.
“If they have to die, you take them, but you cannot take all of them,” said Mr. Berger, explaining the impetus for showing them online.
In an essay for the exhibition, Keith Tam, a typographer and assistant professor at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, writes of how the neon signs, vertical and horizontal, in English and Chinese script, once protruded from buildings and wrapped around them, with each drugstore, bank or restaurant competing for attention, creating “a cascading effect.”
In the video “The Making of Neon Signs,” a calligrapher named Fung Siu Wah explains how different professions favored different typography. “Some calligraphers’ style is honest. Businesses that value sincerity would commission these calligraphers,” Mr. Fung says. “Bone-setting clinics, martial arts clubs and sports clubs prefer the Northern Wei style, which makes a strong and powerful impression.”
The process of bending neon glass as shown in the video ‘‘The Making of Neon Signs,’’ one of the offerings in the online exhibition by M+.
West Kowloon Cultural District Authority
Another short video shows Christopher Doyle, a cinematographer for films such as “Chungking Express,” talking about the unique quality of neon light, “which is colder than tungsten ... like the difference between a whore and a wife.”
He predicts that neon will make a comeback, somewhat like Polaroid and film.
NEONSIGNS.HK packs a nostalgic punch, especially at a time when many in Hong Kong worry about being eclipsed by mainland Chinese culture.
The online exhibition has had more than 260,000 page views since it went live on March 21, with about two-thirds of those coming from inside Hong Kong.
The public has submitted more than 3,000 photos of neon signs, and curators are scrambling to upload them to the Neon Map. In addition, “The Making of Neon Signs” uploaded on YouTube has been viewed 115,000 times.
Mr. Berger says public interest stems from a wider soul-searching over Hong Kong’s place in the world that began just before the end of British rule in 1997, when it became a special administrative region within China.
“The Neon Signs project is not an anti-China project, but I think has to do with the idea that Hong Kong has to find an identity,” he said. “It’s colonial, but it’s not colonial. It’s China, but it’s not China. It’s a crazy place.”
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