Thadde Comar, a Franco-Swiss photographer, created the documentary project How Was Your Dream? during the extradition bill protests in Hong Kong from June to October 2019. The work is now on display at the Belfast Photo Festival, running until 30 June at various venues across the city.
Police Arrests and Protest Scale
Police arrested more than 10,000 Hongkongers in connection with the 2019 protest movement. Comar's work addresses new forms of demonstration and insurrection in an era shaped by increasingly seamless systems of control.
Innovative Protest Tactics
Among the new tactics developed by protesters was the use of laser lights to disrupt police activities. The title How Was Your Dream? refers to a phrase used by demonstrators to speak discreetly about their experiences of protest.
Five years earlier, in Hong Kong, the umbrella movement had been quickly repressed by state and police violence. Faced with a sophisticated arsenal of control including facial recognition, geolocation, carding, eavesdropping, infiltration, water cannon, teargas, helicopters, sonic weapons, and non-lethal rifles, Hong Kong demonstrators developed techniques based on invisibility and anonymity.
Mass Participation and Escalation
Millions of residents joined the protests, which threatened to paralyse the city. The once weekly protests quickly increased in frequency. Comar wonders whether the protesters' strategies, which contribute to the transformation of forms of struggle and resistance, 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? The protests were initially focused on an extradition bill enabling authorities to transfer people from Hong Kong to China's Communist party-controlled courts.
Aftermath and Repression
After the protests and heavy-handed police response, open displays of dissent in Hong Kong became extremely rare. At one point, police arrested a student union in possession of a bag of laser pointers, claiming they were dangerous 'offensive weapons'. By August 2022, more than 10,000 Hongkongers had been arrested in connection with the 2019 protest movement and nearly 3,000 prosecuted, according to government statistics.
Comar's project is an attempt to provide a strictly visual testimony in an artistic manner, standing out from journalistic representations and offering a new perspective to the viewer.
