Power plays: Alternative performance art and urban space in the political life of the city

© Hong Kong University Press 2010. All rights reserved. In the decade since the handover, political life in Hong Kong has entered the realm of the performative. Political perspectives have moved beyond debate in broadcast media and institutional forums to emerge in performances in the public sphere - alternative art actions and performance artworks about social and political issues - that have taken corporeal shape in the life of the city, in the spaces of daily life and in demonstrations and marches, across the island, from park to town and in the heart of the city's zones of connectivity and mobility, culminating in demonstrations at the Star Ferry and Queen's Piers in 2006-2007. From individual artists and cultural workers and small groups to crowds in the hundreds of thousands, people have organized and created community events, art actions and alternative art forms to express a range of local, regional and national concerns