Simulation and disappearance: the posters of Kan Tai-Keung

In the lead-up to the handover in 1997, there was considerable media interest in Hong Kong and various attempts to define the city's identity. The self-consciousness brought about by the city's imminent change in status resulted in a repetition of cliches about the city and its culture that usually described both as a 'meeting place between East and West'. Within both the popular Western and Chinese discourses of colonisation, this binary opposition has been constantly reinforced. The continual separation of the two cultures served both colonial powers during the 1990s as the struggle for cultural influence intensified. Besides the obvious fact that East and West have been 'meeting' on the coast of China for hundreds of years, Hong Kong itself has long been exposed to a variety of cultures, initially as a trading port and since the 1970s as a global financial centre. For this reason, it is too simplistic to read recent Hong Kong visual culture as a meeting between East and West for it has long been influenced by, and part of, international cultural trends. Since the 1980s, a generation of Hong Kong graphic designers have gained international reputations within the design world. Designers such as Kan Tai-Keung and Alan Chan have developed a visual culture that goes beyond the easy East/West binary, and in the process forged a recognisable Hong Kong visual identity that is both local and global. Kan Tai-Keung's creation of a particular design language evolved through the 1980s and 1990s. My focus in this paper is his posters during these decades---posters for design or art exhibitions, lectures or poster exhibitions as well as special features for magazines---rather than his packaging, logo design or visual art work