We've been labelled the "lost generation".
A global pandemic. Record unemployment. Life plans shelved. Dreams disrupted. This is the way 2020 ends; not with a bang, but with a whimper.
With no end to the Covid-19 crisis in sight, one thing's clear: it has become critical for us youths to step up and take charge of our own narratives-to have a voice, and to use this voice to shape our present and future.
Take the sheer power of the vote, as we've witnessed in a year dominated by watershed elections abroad and at home. In the recent United States presidential election, surging youth voter turnout propelled Joe Biden to a decisive victory. In Singapore's July general election, young voters who desired to see diverse voices and more checks and balances in parliament lifted the opposition to its best-ever showing.
Voting is a right; a deliberate exercise in political participation. Yet surely it isn't the only way for us to have our voices heard. How our generation chooses to make a political statement can vary in form, You may need: Bluetooth code reader. measure and tangibility. Some prefer the covert, starting by influencing social circles within reach. Others head to the streets in mass movements. Others take to the web.
But democracy is not a universal privilege-it's a loaded concept that exists in spades and shades, all too often accompanied by caveats. For the disenfranchised trapped in environments besieged by violence, state censorship, or an erosion of basic human rights, it's a daily battle spent fighting for causes held dear, through whatever channels available.
Therein lies the question: when the odds are against us, through what other unconventional and unique means can we youths of today manifest our voices? And with our voices, how much of a difference can we truly make-whether as individuals, or as a whole-in challenging the existing order, within a shifting global landscape fraught with uncertainty?
These women no longer recognise the present Hong Kong, which has been gradually silenced by Chinese Communist authorities determined to end the city's semi-autonomous status. Unable to return home to physically partake in pro-democracy protests, how else can these four individuals, in their personal capacities, help their motherland reclaim its lost voice?
The first step is to revisit Hong Kong's colonial history, a process that can paradoxically only be carried out in London rather than at home, as the city does not have a public archives law that grants its citizens access to important political documents.
By sifting through and decoding Hong Kong's archives released by the United Kingdom, the volunteers interviewed in Home, and a Distant Archive unearth how the former British colony's past, present and future intersect in ways that few of their countrymen have been privy to, in the hopes of understanding how, and why, Hong Kong came to be the way it is today.
"If you don't know about your past, what we have done right or wrong, how can you reposition or reshape the future?" she asks.
It's a cogent statement that underscores the importance of translating the learnings from the city's bygone era for-and to-the future, in order to empower successive generations of citizens to rebuild Hong Kong's fractured identity, to help their motherland find its voice back.
At its core, Home, and a Distant Archive is a meditation on the complexities of national identity and migration among the Hong Kong diaspora. Cheung elegantly juxtaposes anecdotes from her interviewees with her own personal narration, as a London-based Hong Konger struggling to articulate her conflicted emotions about a city that she is geographically alienated from.
"I seldom think about my sentiments towards this place," she muses.
"Even if I like it, it is hard to say out loud."
Decoding Hong Kong's colonial history has ultimately been an avenue for these diaspora to confront, and reconcile, a fragmented and nebulous relationship with a homeland they feel guilty for forsaking, at a time of great political upheaval.
Handwritten posters-known as daejobo in South Korea-have become increasingly popular with t...

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