A Tango with Kaito - a love triangle between kaito, island and humans

“Boats, islands, human beings… Three inter-dependent elements, forming an unbreakable trilateral relationship.” – “The Island Tales”

Art film “The Island Tales” captured the close-ended nature of an island as a metaphor for the end of a century. In 2000, concepts such as “anthropocene”, “non-human agency” and materiality have yet become prominent academic terms, but the film predicted how easily our human lives fly by in a befuddled, hazy state, like a drunken dream.

During the days when tunnels, bridges and railways have yet to exist, kaitos weave between shores of constellation-like islands and the New Territories. Transportation routes, designed to aggravate towards the city center, limited the exchange between humans and objects to the dichotomy of urban and rural, stifling the openness of the ocean. Setting off from the seaside of the islands, kaitos and cable ferries that sailed towards entangled directions linked up village with village, as well as village with towns. This interconnection allowed the islands to be inter-dependent without the need to rely on the city as an intermediary.

As an introduction to the study of kaito, our team began our study in Peng Chau, looking back at her connections with other islands, as well as the humans, events and objects it carried. Aside from the city, where else can the islands head towards?

Traditions require three conditions to survive through circles of life: communities, free public space and the resilient local knowledge. Our mini research exhibition shall utilize the socio-economic networks between islands and commission Cheung Chau’s Yau Luen company to make flower plaques, which were co-designed with designer Tam Shui. On pedestrian-friendly islands, where there are no cars on the streets, and the sky and the sea are intertwined – visitors can find these three “exhibition boards” rich in outlying island characteristics along the shores of Peng Chau and Mui Wo. They would display the results of our study “A Tango with Kaito”, and allow viewers to enjoy the lesser design.

About the organisers:

Island Studies Network HK (ISNHK) will serve as a platform to enable knowledge and practice exchange among members and the public, both regionally and inter-regionally. We embrace all kinds of academic scrutiny, social innovation, technological experiment as well as creative praxis as a way of knowledge production about or via the island. By standing in Hong Kong, a place surrounded by water connecting to the world, the Network will be a bridge for us all to link up with other interested parties, both regionally and inter-regionally, to open up a new horizon for island studies.