Chapter 2:
Aestheticisation of Politics: A Conflation of Heritage Revitalisation and Community Arts
DOI: 10.54165/9789887928522/02
Isabella S. W. Yun
Heritage conservation as a critical analysis has come into being in Hong Kong because there is a conflict between the ‘difficult’ history of colonisation and the uncertain cultural vision of the post-colonisation era. This conflict as the way it happens is the consequence of cultural governance in a decentralised mechanism, linked to the belief that the indirect government of cultural agencies strengthens artists’ autonomy in their aesthetic encounters with the community.
This article, based on Walter Benjamin’s aestheticising politics, Bourdieu’s art perception in ‘autonomous field’ and Foucault’s regulatory power, uses the master plan of heritage conservation in the Hong Kong Central District to emphasize the historical gaze for heritage conservation and novelty of the agential power. It evaluates key factors in the context of postcolonial Hong Kong that have been associated with agent’s function, artists’ perception, viewers’ aesthetic experience, and consequences of the conflation of heritage conservation and community art.
To cite:
Yun, Isabella. “Aestheticisation of Politics: A Conflation of Heritage Revitalisation and Community Arts”. In Empower Arts, Animate Communities, edited by Benny Lim & Hing-kay Oscar Ho, 20-30. Hong Kong: Department of Cultural and Religious Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2021. https://doi.org/10.54165/9789887928522/02
