Kong Hong-chuen, a visual artist known as Kongkee, has reimagined Hong Kong as a cyberpunk metropolis. In this world, a robot contains the soul of the great ancient Chinese poet, Qu Yuan.
The animation artist had long envisioned a more nuanced story behind the historical figure from the Warring States Period. Kong felt there was more to Qu’s story than just being an exiled politician.
“I wondered if Qu ... was more than just a patriot who cared only about the country and its people,” said the 46-year-old from Hong Kong now based in London.
Over the past decade, he has been developing this science fiction tale, Dragon’s Delusion, into comic strips and animations.
In 2020, one of Kong’s animated short films won the grand prize at the prestigious DigiCon6 Asia Awards. His work has been displayed in galleries and museums in Hong Kong and around the world.
The latest culmination of his cyberpunk universe is a 208-page comic book, Dragon’s Delusion: Cosmic Travel Agency. Released in March, it shows Kong’s older works alongside new ones that further explore this alternative universe where futuristic technology meets Chinese imperial history.
“Sci-fi fuels young people’s imagination towards the future and enables us to re-evaluate the present,” he explained. “An alternative story is very important for people to understand the world.
Kongkee’s inspiration
Although sci-fi stories often depict imaginary futures, Kong hopes his work can raise crucial questions relevant to our world – for example, how does technology shape humanity?
The illustrator’s Dragon’s Delusion series often emphasises the conflict between innovation and humans’ desire for power.
“Despite its setting in the Warring States Period, the story explores the reactions of robots, humans and cyborgs to technology and desires, which I believe are universal and timeless, and the audience can still find the present in it,” he said.
Kong’s fascination with the Warring States Period is because of the era’s intellectual legacy, which saw different schools of thought competing to make their voices heard. This had a profound impact on academics and innovation.
“In the face of technology, our imagination, desires, and attitudes may not have changed much over thousands of years,” the artist stressed.
It was in 2012 when Kong first transformed these reflections into a weekly comic series for a local publication. In 2016, he renamed it Dragon’s Delusion. Over the next two years, he made the first two animated shorts of this series.
Hong Kong’s role in depicting its own future
But Kong also wanted his art to help raise the global status of Hong Kong’s art scene. He had noticed that despite the hard work of the city’s artists, its animation industry “had gone quiet for a long time”.
“Everyone perhaps only remembered McDull,” he said, speaking of the beloved cartoon from the 2000s.
So in 2018, he launched a crowdfunding campaign to fund a longer film. With that money, he released Dragon’s Delusion – Preface in 2020, his award-winning, 16-minute animated video showing how a robot came to take on an ancient soul.
Kong’s portrayal of Hong Kong has stood out from the crowd of sci-fi artists who depict the city as a dystopian concrete jungle.
“Overseas film productions often portray Hong Kong as a dystopian city, emphasising elements like the ... Kowloon Walled City. But as citizens [here], we know there is much more to this image,” he said.
Kong’s art depicts the city as a place where the natural and artificial are intertwined.
“If you hike to The Peak, you can see high-rises on one side and mountains on the other, creating a rare, juxtaposed scene,” he noted.
His work also includes elements that evoke the city’s memories: neon signs, trams and rooftops of public housing estates. His signature bright colour palette was also inspired by Hong Kong tradition.
“It is the same palette used for paper offerings,” he pointed out. “It represents everyone’s materialistic desires for the world.”
From last November to January of this year, the visual artist displayed his version of Hong Kong in an exhibition at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, “Kongkee: Warring States Cyberpunk”. The museum said the exhibition had nearly 22,000 visitors.
In the future, Kong hopes to bring his work to the big screen and believes Hong Kong has a role to play in the global animation scene.
“Though we grew up as big fans of anime watching many works from Japan and the West, we want people to appreciate the work of local animators more,” he said.
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