Feeling Ethnic, Visualizing Interruption

In Hong Kong, South Asians and other ethnic minorities have achieved a more heightened visibility in recent years, notably through wide public debates during and after enactment of the Race Discrimination Ordinance in 2008. However, scholarly research on ethnic minorities in HK remains chronically underdeveloped. To date, there is little attention paid to the minorities’ own sense of subjecthood, such as their construction and articulation of self-understanding formed through lived experiences, sensibilities, emotions, sentiments, empathy, and even tempers and moods. Taking the important cue of the “affective turn” in cultural theory, this study asks: what are the representations of affective/emotional energies and intensities surrounding the ethnic figures/strangers in the dominant visual culture, how do ethnic minorities respond to or disrupt these visual narratives, and how can their self-representation through visual discourse reveal and transform their lived experience? A case study of an award-winning youth camp program for incubation of young ethnic minority filmmakers, called “All About Us” organized by the Hong Kong Arts Center, will be discussed.