🖼️Artist Talk | Affordable Journey to Unaffordable Nostalgia (Online) How do artists get from first idea to finished exhibition? This online talk follows the artistic journeys of the artists behind the exhibition Unaffordable Nostalgia. They will discuss their research and production methods and their approaches to experimentation. The talk is mainly for students studying art in Hong Kong. Anyone who wants to learn more about the artists is welcome to join. Zoom link at Bio 🔗 📅 Thursday, 29 October 2026 🕙 10:00–11:30am (HK) / 11:00am–12:30pm (KST) 💻 Online via Zoom Meeting 🗣️ Korean-English consecutive interpretation provided 🎤 Presenters: Ubac Studio and Foreseen Agency 👥 Moderators: Min-hyung Kang & Wong Ka Ying 👩‍🎨Presenters Ubac Studio is a Seoul-based media artist duo made up of Hyeunjoo Woo and Jiyun Park. Their XR-based interactive installations explore the moments when technology’s construction of the world collides with individual sensory experience. Their work has been presented at the Immersive Competition of the 79th Festival de Cannes, Venice Immersive at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival, Ars Electronica, and the Powerhouse Museum. They received the Festivals Connexion Award at Annecy 2026 and the New Media Artist Award at NeMAF 2025. Foreseen Agency is an artist duo formed by Shan Wong and Kachi Chan. Through participatory research and speculative design, they examine how capitalist, technological, and social systems intersect. Their work reveals the invisible logics of control, value generation, and techno-social infrastructures. They have shown work at Asia Culture Centre (Gwangju), UAAD (NYC), Singapore Art Week (2026), and Diriyah Art Futures (Riyadh). They have co-authored papers in Leonardo (MIT Press), SIGGRAPH, and ISEA. 🎤Moderators Min-hyung Kang is a curator and interpreter/translator working across English, Japanese, and Korean. She is interested in trans-locality and decentralisation in art practice. She founded and directed the nonprofit art organisation Barim (2014–2024) and runs the DEGITAL platform. She is currently a co-organiser of Forking Room, a platform for critical engagement with art, technology, and society. Wong Ka Ying is a Hong Kong artist, curator, writer, and PhD candidate in Cultural Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her practice explores art's potential to redistribute power,Diriyah Art Futures (Riyadh). They have co-authored papers in Leonardo (MIT Press), SIGGRAPHarticular attention to Asian migrants and migrant workers in transnational and diasporic contexts.

🧳Expert Talk | The Cultural Economy of Nostalgia from the Perspective of Ecologies of Artistic Practice with Prof. Ashley Lee Wong (黃詠欣) How can digital technology be used to revisit the past, as well as to pursue innovation? This talk proposes a framework in which digital methods help us recover, question, and recontextualise historical materials, memories, and experiences. This approach differs from reading digital practice only through digital art or technological progress. Join Prof. Ashley Lee Wong for a conversation on nostalgia, cultural economies, and artistic practice in the age of technology. Participating artists Ubac Studio, Jang Gayoun, and Foreseen Agency will take part in the discussion. 📅 Monday, 26 October 2026 🕔 5:00–6:30pm (HK) / 6:00–7:30pm (KST) 🗣️ Conducted in English (no interpretation) 👥 Moderators: Wong Ka Ying and Kang Min-hyung Speaker Ashley Lee Wong, PhD is Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies and Associate Director of the MA Cultural Management programme at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is Co-Founder and Artistic Director of MetaObjects, a studio that works with artists and cultural institutions on digital projects. In 2024, she co-initiated the interdisciplinary research project Ecologies of Participation. She is also managing editor of Technophany, Journal for Philosophy and Technology. Her research connects theory and practice and examines contemporary cultural economies for artists working between art and technology. Her work has appeared in Leonardo, Artnodes, DATA browser, Screened Bodies, and Visual Cultural Studies Journal. She is the author of Ecologies of Artistic Practice: Rethinking Cultural Economies through Art and Technology (The MIT Press, 2025).

How can an overseas residency become more than a temporary stay, developing into research, artistic practice, public exchange, and teaching? This Cantonese-language conversation brings together four Hong Kong-based artists and curators who have participated in residency and research programmes in South Korea. Drawing from first-hand experience, the speakers will discuss preparing applications, developing proposals, communicating with host institutions, adapting research in a new context, building relationships during a residency, and carrying its insights back into local practice. The session is designed for art students, graduates, emerging arts workers, and anyone interested in international residencies as spaces for research, exchange, and professional development. 📅 Friday, 2 October 2026 🕖 19:00–21:00 🗣️ Conducted in Cantonese 📺 Watch live or revisit on YouTube: search house.of.hk.literature www.youtube.com/@house.of.hk.literature Speakers Shan Wong｜Foreseen Agency, ACC CREATORS 2024 Shan Wong is part of Foreseen Agency, an artist duo formed by Shan Wong and Kachi Chan. Through participatory research and speculative design, their practice examines capitalist, technological, and social systems, with attention to control, value production, and techno-social infrastructures. Their work has been presented at Asia Culture Centre, UAAD New York, Singapore Art Week, and Diriyah Art Futures, with research published in Leonardo, SIGGRAPH, and ISEA. Keith Lam｜ACC CREATORS 2026 Keith Lam is a media artist and the co-founder and artistic director of Dimension Plus. His work has received awards including Prix Ars Electronica and the Japan Media Arts Festival, and has been presented internationally, including at the Hong Kong Museum of Art, The National Art Center, Tokyo, and Ars Electronica Festival. He received the Hong Kong Arts Development Awards’ Artist of the Year in 2024. Wong Ka Ying｜MMCA International Researcher Residency Program 2026 Wong Ka Ying is a Hong Kong artist, curator, writer, and PhD candidate in Cultural Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her practice explores art’s potential to redistribute power, resist cultural homogenisation, and cultivate collective imagination and action, with particular attention to Asian migrants and migrant workers in transnational and diasporic contexts. Siu Tung Venus｜ Gwangju Biennale Academy 2024 Siu Tung Venus is a curator and artist based between Hong Kong and the Netherlands. Her research connects everyday resilience and poetics with broader public concerns, exploring decentralised narratives, walking practices, port cultures, plural identities, and mobility. Her writings have been selected for the Hong Kong Public Libraries’ Hong Kong Oral History Reference Resources.

Unaffordable Nostalgia, presented by the Korean Cultural Center in Hong Kong, runs from 20 August to 7 November 2026. The exhibition features works by Korean artists Ubac Studio and Jang Gayoun, together with the Hong Kong-based collective Foreseen Agency. It is co-curated by Kang Min-hyung and Wong Ka Ying. The exhibition explores urban development, memory, historical context, and the contemporary urban experience shaped by modern society. Through the cities of Seoul and Hong Kong, it offers new perspectives on how memory and nostalgia are constructed, circulated, and consumed. On 20 August, an artist talk, opening ceremony, and curator tour were held, attracting approximately 50 visitors. Unaffordable Nostalgia asks what is preserved and what is erased in the process of reproducing and consuming spaces and memories that no longer exist. Examining traces left by digital platforms and urban development, the exhibition investigates how memory has come to function as a form of social and cultural value in the present day. Ubac Studio examines hidden layers of the city through a cyber-geological approach. Its interactive game Escape Maps combines deleted street-view imagery with de-recorded data filtered out by artificial intelligence. Visitors participate both as active users of the game and as subjects of the platform, experiencing processes of recording, selection, and erasure within urban space. Hong Kong-based Foreseen Agency reconstructs the pedestrian route leading to PMQ through its work Connected Mosses. Twelve screens installed along a steel staircase connect the repetitive labor of climbing stairs with the seamless convenience of escalator travel as part of a single virtual system. Through the distinctive urban structure of the Mid-Levels district, the work visualizes the social and historical layers embedded in the development and maintenance of urban infrastructure. In Placeless in the Gyeongseong Era, Jang Gayoun examines how contemporary commercial spaces consume and repackage the past. The work explores the ways in which cultural traces of a particular historical period are reinterpreted and marketed under notions of “retro” aesthetics and sentimental nostalgia, demonstrating how memory is reconstructed within contemporary consumer culture. The exhibition takes place at PMQ, a historic building formerly used as police married quarters and now one of Hong Kong’s leading arts and cultural destinations. By treating the venue itself as a historical site, the exhibition investigates the point at which the city’s past and present intersect.

[Opening Reception] Unaffordable Nostalgia 幾堪回首 📅 Date: 20 Aug 2026, 17:00–20:00 🕙 Time: - 5:00 – 5:50 PM | Artist Talk - 6:00 – 8:00 PM | Cocktail Reception - 6:30 – 7:00 PM | Opening Ceremony (Curator's Tour) 📍 Venue: Korean Cultural Center (6–7/F, Block B, PMQ, 35 Aberdeen Street, Central)   How does one afford to remember something that no longer exists? Bringing together three artists/collectives and two curators from South Korea and Hong Kong, this exhibition examines urban development, memory,  and post-capitalism across both cities. Their research uncovers a hidden stratum beneath current urban development — where memory functions as a currency that accelerates the surface above it.   🎨 Artists: Ubac Studio (KR), Jang Gayoun (KR), Foreseen Agency (HK) 🖋️ Curators: Kang Min-hyung (KR), Wong Ka Ying KY (HK) 🏛️ Organised by Korean Cultural Center in Hong Kong 🏛️ Supported by Hong Kong Arts Development Council The views and opinions expressed in this project do not represent the stand of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council.