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Another Day of Depression in Kowloon
Another Day of Depression in Kowloon is a 15-minute video installation that investigates how Hong Kong is portrayed in video games. By re-appropriating the map “KOWLOON” from Call of Duty: Black Ops (2010), this project is both a virtual field study and a digital city portrait.
For over a year, IP Yuk-Yiu explored and documented the Hong Kong neighbourhood that is portrayed as a cliché in the video game and that in reality was demolished in 1993. The filmmaker-gamer removed the game’s graphical elements and avoided encounters with other game characters while filming. Instead, the participants adopt a more meditative, observational stance within the landscape, reflecting on questions surrounding cultural representations of postcolonial Hong Kong.
What remains is a rainy and desolate urban landscape. Another Day of Depression in Kowloon uses the digital representation of Hong Kong to explore how the Western-influenced mass media shapes cultural representations and game design.