31 OCT 2025 (FRI) 15:00-15:15

Oct 31, 2025
1 min read

HKU GEOGRAPHY: Monthly Research Talks

Excessive Hybridities: Film as Method and Madness in East Asian Wet Markets

Date: 31 OCT 2025 (Friday)

Time: 15:00-15:15 (HKT)

Via Zoom: https://hku.zoom.us/j/98300713382?pwd=dGdqelhpWUwyOENmTUJyalVKemtHQT09

(No registration required)

Abstract:

This paper draws on recent mixed-methods research into the commodification of live animals bound for human dietary consumption in Shanghai and Hong Kong, most especially as mediated through digital video. Using insights developed through our attempts to see differently the many relationships between the human and non-human reproduced and renegotiated each day through the infrastructures of the wet market, including our efforts to create new knowledge in specific forms (e.g., documentary film, conceptual advancement, etc.), in this paper we articulate several expressions of failure at the limits of our ability to apprehend these relationships. Specifically, we elaborate four ways that our attempts to use film to understand and inhabit the multiple hybridities of the wet market have taken us in unexpected epistemological directions, and some of the generative spaces of possibility that have opened up around and through the barriers we’ve encountered both in fieldwork and subsequently. As we prepare to extend this research into other East Asian cities, we offer our experiences as an invitation to dialogue on the future of film as method.