hin und her
Duo exhibition by HSU Wai Lun and SO Lai Ping
26.06.–25.07.2026
Goethe-Institut Hongkong
[ 繁體中文︎︎︎]
Duo exhibition by HSU Wai Lun and SO Lai Ping
26.06.–25.07.2026
Goethe-Institut Hongkong
[ 繁體中文︎︎︎]
We follow fashions, deliberately, in and in,
it seems going back and back into the past as well.
— Leung Ping-kwan, ‘In Fabric Alley’.
it seems going back and back into the past as well.
— Leung Ping-kwan, ‘In Fabric Alley’.
Time is out of joint. What lingers like a spectre is not only the past, but also the futures that the past once promised.
You come across an old photograph and feel a sorrow you cannot explain. Is it nostalgia? But you weren't even born then. Perhaps it is something else: a feeling you never had the chance to know. Perhaps what haunts you is the excitement in those faces. Perhaps it is the futures that were once imagined and never arrived.
In German, “hin und her” is the motion of thought that cannot be concluded. In Chinese, “來來回回” describes something that cannot settle, cannot stop. Two languages arrive at the same place. Time no longer moves forward, it only swings, like a pendulum without a clock face. We live in a time that has lost its sense of time. This exhibition moves back and forth through the time of Hong Kong, tracing the slow cancellation of time. No beginning, no end. The past, present, and future: coming and going, hin und her. Fireworks over Victoria Harbour, dragons in the square, group portraits at the gala, races at the racecourse......
We swing back and forth across Hong Kong’s different timelines: between the old and the new, traces of thought, and archival images, revisiting the condition of time in this city.
You come across an old photograph and feel a sorrow you cannot explain. Is it nostalgia? But you weren't even born then. Perhaps it is something else: a feeling you never had the chance to know. Perhaps what haunts you is the excitement in those faces. Perhaps it is the futures that were once imagined and never arrived.
In German, “hin und her” is the motion of thought that cannot be concluded. In Chinese, “來來回回” describes something that cannot settle, cannot stop. Two languages arrive at the same place. Time no longer moves forward, it only swings, like a pendulum without a clock face. We live in a time that has lost its sense of time. This exhibition moves back and forth through the time of Hong Kong, tracing the slow cancellation of time. No beginning, no end. The past, present, and future: coming and going, hin und her. Fireworks over Victoria Harbour, dragons in the square, group portraits at the gala, races at the racecourse......
We swing back and forth across Hong Kong’s different timelines: between the old and the new, traces of thought, and archival images, revisiting the condition of time in this city.
Exhibition View
Re-touch (2026)
HSU Wai Lun
HSU Wai Lun
Gouache on archival pigment print, Chinese Nesting Tables
50 × 60cm; 30 × 40cm; 36 × 27.5cm; 19 × 20cm
50 × 60cm; 30 × 40cm; 36 × 27.5cm; 19 × 20cm
Libraries without readers, clocks without bodies, public spaces emptied of use, I retouch these photographs by removing traces of human activity. Retouching in its older sense, is a second intervention into an existing image.
‘Retouching’ does not inherently mean erasure or deception. It is a second gesture, a return to something already made, in order to bring it closer to an ideal. To retouch is to acknowledge that an image is never complete.
This work returns to the Photo Library of Hong Kong’s Information Services Department. Established in 1959, the archive contains government images and press photographs dating back to the mid-nineteenth century. Organized chronologically, these images form an official narrative of the city, its past, and the futures once imagined for it. The archive itself is a mechanism for shaping public memory.
‘Retouching’ does not inherently mean erasure or deception. It is a second gesture, a return to something already made, in order to bring it closer to an ideal. To retouch is to acknowledge that an image is never complete.
This work returns to the Photo Library of Hong Kong’s Information Services Department. Established in 1959, the archive contains government images and press photographs dating back to the mid-nineteenth century. Organized chronologically, these images form an official narrative of the city, its past, and the futures once imagined for it. The archive itself is a mechanism for shaping public memory.
Reclaimed Blue (2026)
SO Lai Ping
SO Lai Ping
Linen bookcloth, greyboard
31 × 41 cm each
31 × 41 cm each
Approximately 7% of Hong Kong’s land today covers what was once the sea. Land reclamation reveals a land-centric logic of development, in which the sea is understood as an empty space awaiting use. In Western and colonial cartographic traditions, the sea is positioned as a negative space, a backdrop surrounding the main subject. This work reinterprets that relationship from an inverted perspective: that of the ocean itself.
Drawing on maps of Hong Kong from the 1860s to the present, the work traces the extent to which the sea has been rewritten over time. By comparing the surface area of the sea in historical and contemporary maps, each section of sea that has disappeared is isolated and redrawn, transforming these lost waters into a series of hollow forms.
Drawing on maps of Hong Kong from the 1860s to the present, the work traces the extent to which the sea has been rewritten over time. By comparing the surface area of the sea in historical and contemporary maps, each section of sea that has disappeared is isolated and redrawn, transforming these lost waters into a series of hollow forms.
What Hour Are You At? (2026)
HSU Wai Lun, SO Lai Ping
HSU Wai Lun, SO Lai Ping
Mechanical Pendulum clock, UV print on glass
The clock face transforms invisible time into a visible, measurable circular structure.
In this work, the clock face is converted into a spatial coordinate system: Hong Kong becomes the centre of the dial, and other cities are positioned upon it according to their direction relative to Hong Kong. This arrangement does not draw the world inward toward Hong Kong, but rather unfolds outward from Hong Kong as a method of understanding the world.
The clock face becomes more than an image of time, it becomes a device for orienting the world. It maps a full circle, placing the world in relation to Hong Kong.
In this work, the clock face is converted into a spatial coordinate system: Hong Kong becomes the centre of the dial, and other cities are positioned upon it according to their direction relative to Hong Kong. This arrangement does not draw the world inward toward Hong Kong, but rather unfolds outward from Hong Kong as a method of understanding the world.
The clock face becomes more than an image of time, it becomes a device for orienting the world. It maps a full circle, placing the world in relation to Hong Kong.
The Bell of New Year’s Eve · Wartime Hong Kong (2026)
HSU Wai Lun
HSU Wai Lun
Bell striker / WW2 Japanese military bugle, temple bell, archival pigment print, archival pigment print
Dimensions variable
Dimensions variable
On the last night of 1941, the sound of Hong Kong came through radios across Japan. 6 days after Japanese forces occupied Hong Kong, NHK broadcast a recording of the cannon fire from the Hong Kong assault to audiences nationwide. It replaced the “Joya no Kane’: Japan’s end-of-year ritual in which temple bells are struck by hand, 108 times, to dispel the 108 earthly desires in Buddhist tradition.
One of the starting points of this work, and one of its difficulties, is tracing what took place on that final night, 85 years ago: whether the sound of the battle for Hong Kong was broadcast over Japanese radio, and if so, what that sound was.
Another element of this work originates from a Japanese WWII bugle. A foundry was commissioned to melt it down and recast the metal as a striker used to ring a temple bell.
During the Pacific War, the Japanese government requisitioned metal nationwide, melting down approximately 47,000 temple bells to manufacture weapons. Might the bronze of this wartime bugle once have belonged to one of those bells? In being recast as a bell striker, the bronze completes a possible circle, from bell, to weapon, to bell again.
One of the starting points of this work, and one of its difficulties, is tracing what took place on that final night, 85 years ago: whether the sound of the battle for Hong Kong was broadcast over Japanese radio, and if so, what that sound was.
Another element of this work originates from a Japanese WWII bugle. A foundry was commissioned to melt it down and recast the metal as a striker used to ring a temple bell.
During the Pacific War, the Japanese government requisitioned metal nationwide, melting down approximately 47,000 temple bells to manufacture weapons. Might the bronze of this wartime bugle once have belonged to one of those bells? In being recast as a bell striker, the bronze completes a possible circle, from bell, to weapon, to bell again.
Waterline (2026)
SO Lai Ping
SO Lai Ping
Glass, paint, woodboard
35 × 35 × 30 cm each
35 × 35 × 30 cm each
This work originates from the experience of organizing, comparing, and reading old maps of Hong Kong. The act of creation is regarded as a mode of thinking parallel to the process of reading these maps. By examining maps from different periods, it traces the transformation of the city’s form over time. These maps, each carrying distinct historical moments, are printed on transparent glass; within their semi-transparent overlays, changes and the rise and fall of place names intersect and continuously recombine.
One Minute (2026)
HSU Wai Lun, SO Lai Ping
HSU Wai Lun, SO Lai Ping
Multi-channel sound installation; Discman, CDs
1:46 min (Cantonese), 1:43 min (German)
1:46 min (Cantonese), 1:43 min (German)
We assume time is universal, that a minute means the same thing to everyone. But each of us carries a different clock inside, shaped by language, by body, by habit. When we count, we do not simply mark time; we expose how intimately, and how imprecisely, we feel it.
In this work, invited participants were divided into two groups: German and Cantonese, with three in each. Each person was recorded alone, counting aloud from 1 to 60 in their mother tongue, marking sixty seconds. No timer. No conductor. Only the internal clock each person carries, in the sounds of their native language. This work sits in the gap between clock time and human time, between outside and inside.
In this work, invited participants were divided into two groups: German and Cantonese, with three in each. Each person was recorded alone, counting aloud from 1 to 60 in their mother tongue, marking sixty seconds. No timer. No conductor. Only the internal clock each person carries, in the sounds of their native language. This work sits in the gap between clock time and human time, between outside and inside.