Hong Kong Tatler and Louis Vuitton's creative collaboration project, Uncharted Territories, sees eight innovative artists work in pairs to produce work on the theme, 'the spirit of travel'. This week, we follow the work of Kevin Poon and Anais Mak

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Photography by Nic and Bex Gaunt

Eight months ago, Hong Kong Tatler and Louis Vuitton came together to forge a platform that would celebrate collaboration and creativity. The resulting project, entitled Uncharted Territories, saw eight of the city’s most interesting and influential artists and creatives—chosen for their influence and relevance in their respective fields—work together in pairs to produce expressions on a theme: the spirit of travel. The participants were motivated not only by the rare opportunity to work in unlikely couplings but also by the chance to inspire and energise fellow artists in the city’s burgeoning scene. Guided by curator William Zhao, the four teams were given full artistic freedom to produce works that capture travel in its multifarious definitions—physical, spiritual and otherwise. The works are highly personal statements yet all point to the transient nature of Hong Kong, a metropolis that has evolved rapidly to become a global hub, a node where culture and commerce vie for attention.

The first instalment of the project looks behind the scenes at the work-in-progress of Kevin Poon and Anais Mak. Generation T serial entrepreneur Kevin Poon, whose diverse business ventures include a clothing label, event production company and coffee shop chain, joined forces with Anais Mak, the fashion designer behind Jourden, to create a work about how we document our journeys.


Unexpected Poet

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Kevin began shooting on film a year ago, and enjoys the mystery and anticipation involved when developing his reels. “I’ve been using some films that are discontinued or expired, so it’s a lottery how they will come out. It’s like having 100,000 filters on your Instagram and you don’t really know which one it’s going to use.” He has also written short poems to accompany the images. “These are collections of people or experiences or vibes that I’ve been getting,” he says of the photos. “It’s a little different than what people expect, I guess. The images and also the message—people don’t know me as a photographer.”


Moving Through Movies

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Anais, also working outside her comfort zone, has taken a virtual approach to travel with an interactive video to complement Kevin’s photos. Viewers will be able to navigate their way through an imagined world by making choices within scenes. “I wanted to let the viewer have the authority to have their own angle on the designed space that I offered,” she says, “in contrast to pictures, which are really linear interpretations and really voyeuristic.”


An Image Overload

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Their work is a comment on the proliferation of images in modern society and the way in which they are interpreted and used to shape identity. “I would consider myself the last of the millennial generation,” says Kevin. “We are quite ADD in how we process images—everything’s very fast.” Anais agrees that the way we perceive images has changed. “Every day we are bombarded with streams of images from different levels and all these images are trying to form a non-linear narrative in your brain.”


The Human Connection

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Kevin and Anais say they hope the curated nature of their work offers some respite from this image saturation rather than adding to it, and they also just wanted to make something that resonates. “The struggles that I face have been faced by other people—life and love and loss,” says Kevin. “Hopefully people can vibe with it and get something out of it.”


 Follow the progress of the other teams through our behind-the-scenes videos

 This article was printed in the December 2016 issue of Hong Kong Tatler