HKU Bulletin April 2010 (Vol. 11 No. 2)

36 The University of Hong Kong Bulletin 37 April 2010 A FINE ART lesson Students have curated an exhibition of rare books in a first-time collaboration between the Faculty of Arts, the University Museum and the HKU libraries. LEARNING AT THE deep end Journalism students are getting hands-on training in the rough-and- tumble world of American broadcast journalism. Teaching and Learning European depictions of China in 18th and 19th century books may seem an esoteric source of real-life experiences, but for eight Fine Arts students they represented an uncommon opportunity to gain new skills and insights. The students used illustrations from the books as the basis for an exhibition they curated at the University Museum over the winter, where they did everything from selecting the featured prints, deciding the order they would appear in and writing captions and entries for a bilingual catalogue, to helping to place the books in cases and adjusting the lighting. “This was not just about our studies but about having to learn to interact with people who don’t know anything about art. From this, we learned what the public would want to know,” Rachel Suen Ka-lee said. The exhibition was a collaboration arranged by Dr Gregory Thomas of the School of Humanities (Fine Arts) with Iris Chan and Edith Chan in the library’s Special Collections department and Yeung Chun-tong, the Director of the University Museum and Art Gallery. “Art history has always been based on a heavy dose of hands-on experience and engagement with real objects,” Dr Thomas said. “One thing we don’t have much of in Hong Kong that improves the study of art history is examples of western art. But we do have a very rich collection of antique books in the library. The Journalism and Media Studies Centre (JMSC) has linked up with ABC News, of the American Broadcasting Corporation, to provide content generated by students for broadcast in the US. The initiative is part of the ABC News on Campus programme and HKU is the first university outside the US to be invited to join. “This programme gives students a professional, real-life experience in dealing with one of the largest television news companies in the world,” the Director of the JMSC’s Broadcasting Programme, Jim Laurie, said. Mr Laurie worked for 21 years as a correspondent with ABC News. “They have to pitch their stories in a way any professional journalist would,” he said, and produce it to ABC’s rigorous standards. “They also get to see that people in the US don’t look at the world as we do out here.” Chen Liyi has had a taste of that in her first few weeks with the programme. She’s a third-year Journalism and Economics student and one of two co-ordinators in charge of staying in regular contact with ABC News’ New York office on students’ story proposals. ABC News has already aired a student story about Hong Kong bankers who do business during the day and box with each other at night. “My hat goes off to the kids who are doing it. They are basically using all their breaks to work on stories – Chinese New Year, reading week, semester breaks. I think what motivates them is the opportunity to be part of, and to be seen to be part of, a professional organization,” Mr Laurie said. Liyi also finds it adds to her understanding of a free media. She has found ABC’s openness to proposals refreshing compared to the boundaries that would be laid down in her native Singapore. One of the reasons she came to Hong Kong and HKU was to see how a freer media operates and what the limits to free speech might be at both ends of the spectrum. “Freedom is good but not all good, control is bad but not all bad. You can flip it around. That’s why I came here, to see all that. As a foreigner, I can stand back and take a look,” she said. The ABC News programme is funded in part by a Teaching Development Grant. Mr Laurie said they also sought other co-production agreements with other international media organizations. “The goal was to give the students an opportunity to handle actual works of art and gain experience in curatorial work and research and writing. The work for this assignment would be typical in the museum world.” The students were trained how to handle the books, including washing their hands before class, never opening the books flat, never touching the illustrations with bare hands because of sweat and grease, using only pencils around the books and ensuring the humidity and lighting were set at the right levels. More importantly, they also got a deeper understanding of historical European depictions of China as a place of strange landscapes and costumes, and sometimes barbaric practices. Winnie Tsang Hoi-yan said: “I worked with an illustration about punishment [in which a man is having his foot cut off]. I already knew about the 10 worst punishments of the Qing dynasty, but I never knew they were portrayed as something as childish as in that book. “You have to be very sensitive to the needs of an American audience,” she said. “It’s a different society and a different context. In the back of your mind, you have to think, this is not even remotely Asia. “When we’re looking for interview subjects, it’s better if they speak English; the audience isn’t going to relate very well to Chinese- speaking subjects. The stories we pitch also have to relate to the audience. Recently we had a story on the bird’s nest stadium in Beijing. The bird’s nest is iconic so people can relate to that. We have to find subjects they are familiar with.” Twelve HKU undergraduate and graduate students are producing content and they were selected for their diverse backgrounds and potential. The students come from Hong Kong, Mainland China, Singapore, the US, Denmark, the Netherlands and the UK and they have a wide range of experiences. For example, some have worked with media organizations, such as CNN, one student was formerly a professional footballer and another was a competitive swimmer and diver at university level. Mr Laurie and his colleagues Rob McBride, Ng Ka-ho and Roy Ching are providing the students with guidance and technical support to help their pitches succeed. While the bird’s nest story is still in development, “The book was about the criminal justice system in China but there were only pictures, nothing else. It showed China as more violent than just, and tried to sensationalize the whole thing. China comes across as inferior and barbaric, and its justice system is also presented like a kind of entertainment. At first I was amazed by this but as I read more, I felt that China was being used as an object for others to impose their power on.” Her colleague, Nicole Fung Nok-kan, said the illustrations they worked with also made her more aware of stereotyping. “It has made me think of how I perceive other cultures. When I see an image, I won’t trust it 100 per cent. I will think about what underlies it.” Dr Thomas said this was an unusual exercise given the difficulty in identifying artwork that students could handle and of tying in with the museum’s schedule. But he hoped there could be more curating opportunities in future with the advent of the new four-year curriculum and new exhibition space at the Centennial Campus.