Hong Kong: Man Seen With Red Plastic Bag

The University Museum and Art Gallery (UMAG), The University of Hong Kong (HKU) will feature a video titled Man with Red Plastic Bag in Hong Kong from December 5, 2024 to January 12, 2025. This film project by the artist Prof. David Clarke is composed of a series of clips shot in 2014 that feature a red plastic bag at various locations in Hong Kong. Most of the clips present the bag in its natural habitat—the Hong Kong streetscape—highlighting the city's diversity along the way, and suggesting that the Hong Kong streets might be the video's real subject.

As described by Clarke, "for some reason, red plastic bags have long been a common feature of the Hong Kong streetscape—an ubiquitous part of market stalls and smaller, non-brand-name stores frequented by everyday people. You might even describe them as being an underappreciated cultural icon."

The documentary style is undermined by the inclusion of several staged clips, blurring the boundary between fact and fiction and influencing how viewers perceive the overall video. Not long after this piece was made, a 2015 extension of the plastic bag levy introduced a charging structure that greatly affected stores that had previously given away the bags for free. As a result, it is now much less common to see red plastic bags around Hong Kong.