How was your dream ? is a photographic project realized during the Hong Kong protests between June and October 2019. This work deals with new forms of demonstration and insurrection in our post-contemporary era dominated by hard controlling societies. Five years before, in Hong Kong, the “Umbrella Movement“ was quickly repressed by state and police violence. In 2019 the democratic uprising that began in May, gave itself the means to continue. Faced with a sophisticated arsenal of control (facial recognition, geolocation, carding, eavesdropping, infiltration, water cannons, tear gas, helicopter, sonic weapons, non-lethal rifles), the Hong Kong demonstrators have developed a repertoire of techniques based on principles of invisibility and intraceability (anonymity, lasers of blindness, pocket of faraday, vision by drones, masks of all kinds, encrypted communication etc…), allowing them to mitigate the effects of the repression. These new devices, which contribute to the transformation of the forms of struggle and resistance, however, push for the gradual erasure of individual singularities. In the future, will societies and sophisticated systems of control, force us to make our human singularities disappear? Will this be done in favor of a new common identity ?
Thaddé Comar is based in Paris and Lausanne where he juggles between commissioned photography, editorials and personal explorations. He is the winner of the sixth edition of the AOYF Human Rights Photography Prize awarded by the Act On Your Future Foundation in Geneva.
curator Florent Basiletti
partners Fondation Act On Your Future, Epson
L’Engagement
from July 1 to September 29, 2024
Manuel Rivera-Ortiz Foundation
18 rue de la Calade
13200 Arles
