ABOUT CREATIVITY AND WHY IT DOESN'T FLOURISH IN HK

1. How can governments nurture a spirit of innovation?

Governments need to provide cheap space and resources in order for artists to pursue their vocation full time. Art and creativity require a high degree of risk-taking and trailblazing. Recognition and reward are never overnight. For example, rents in Hong Kong severely penalize commercial uncertainty, making it very difficult for would-be artists to hang out their shingle and do something unprecedented and daring.

1. What do you appreciate most about Hong Kong?

No doubt about it: I love the efficiency and can-do attitude of Hong Kong and its people. Besides that, though, it's generally a cultural desert, where you live in an artistic-creative-intellectual terrarium of your own making. If you don't possess the capacity for self-nurturing, intellectually, HK is a tough place.

1. What is Hong Kong’s position on the global creative map?

Hong Kong is well-known to be devoid of cultural leadership or even inspiration. This is a place where commercial ambition takes pride of place in society, unfortunately. Hong Kong is better known as a crossroads of finance and trade, rather than for any artistic achievements or destinations.

1. What should the world know about your work (e.g. values, successes, creative process)?

Whatever I'm doing, I seek to influence minds, whatever the substance of the message. Despite the seeming zigzag of my career from design to biotech to environmentalism, the entire thing is underpinned by my desire to engineer perceptual shifts in consumption and culture. Whether I have been even partially successful is a totally different question! I choose new topics and challenges which force me to confront my total ignorance and attain mastery of totally new areas of knowledge and thinking.

these answers were written for a "book project on the subject of Creative Industries, that will be published in April 2010 by the Creative Industries Office of Austrian Trade and Folio Publishers in Vienna....the book reflects on recent developments in Creative Industries hubs such as London, Hong Kong, New York, Shanghai and Tokyo.... we [have] invite[d] four personalities from each city who either live or work there or know it very well to answer four questions, especially related to their area of work. Amongst others, designers Alberto Alessi (Italy) and Alfredo Häberli (Switzerland), artist/architect Vito Acconci (USA), author Tom Lanoye (Belgium), and architect Ben van Berkel (the Netherlands) have already sent us their answers to these questions.