(After coming back from Venice, finally got time to check the SCMP, it seems quite many editing has been done to my article, the most obvious one, is of course the way it now started: " I am an art critic; ..." how horrible and unconsiderate. Anyway, here is the original 2nd version I wrote for them.

Whenever people addressed me as an art critic, I felt it more like a symptom of our local art scene, trying desperately to make up some art critics that in reality do not exist. The fact is that, art criticism is still almost an impossible career here and now. Our art scene, at this stage, is facing a dilemma. We need more professionals for different positions, but we cannot support them in career terms, especially those without institutional backup. The paucity of criticism, I think, owes as much to this problematic demand as of its lack in supply.

It is probably commonsense that an art scene is foremost about, but importantly not only about, artists and artworks. Besides the production front, there are the reception end, the media in between, plus the academic, the commercial aspects, together with the stated policy and invisible politics of various funding bodies, as well as different physical institutions. An art critic is not only useful in assessing their performance, but in bringing about a dialogue in-between them. Contemporary art has long envisioned discourse as part of its constitution, which also explains why critic turns curator is so popular nowadays.

What critics want is relatively simple, just an open platform for contributions that be able to draw at least the arts circle attention. Only via free exchange and textual accumulation of ideas, could more meaningful discussions move on to a higher level. Our art scene however failed to satisfy even this minimum need, as there are fewer and fewer spaces for contributions in the media. When rooms for trials are reduced, diversity and dynamics will inevitably also diminish.

From my experience, most editors prefer arts policy discussion to proper art criticism, topics that have more social relevance. This is quite essential, since the powers of different local authorities are often unchecked, while their decisions lacked transparency. However, it has also the danger of overshadowing reviews. We have actually over a thousand local exhibitions each year, unfortunately, most of them disappeared without stirring any critical responses. And what good does it do, if the many new art archives are collecting nothing substantial but invitation postcards?

It is true that as more artists are get funding from the Arts Development Council (ADC), articles commissioning for exhibition catalogues are rising, but it could never replace the reviews. How to generate a space for independent contributors is still an urgent issue. The present mentality of ADC letting each small field, like dance or visual art, publishing their own criticism, is not only an inefficient, out-dated mode, more fatalistically, it restricts the potential readership.

It seems that our administrators have simply too strong an opinion on what they want (instead of what the practitioners truly need or could provide), and too rigid a bureaucracy to response to the spontaneous local artistic practices. ADC now do support some critics associations, but like the bi-monthly of the International Association of Theatre Critics (HK), it cannot even fulfill the ADC guideline to pay the contributors! And they are supposed to fight for critic’s rights?

If ADC had sponsored the art criticism website aRTHK that I founded, by lifting the cost of traditional publication, I could at least manage to pay some reasonable fee to the writers. Yet, I am happy that aRTHK is still independent today, for we could speak as much against article 23 as we want there. The continuous neglect of the local development of art criticism, one might perhaps have the right to fear, is a sort of hidden criticism censorship by the authorities via resource allocation priority.