Matt Hope Wearing Cooling Suit 0, Photo by Christopher Adams

Hello world! This is Jon Phillips making a recap of Breakerspace HK in a way I have not done in ages, writing a review. I am going to put everything on my mind here, and continue the precedent set with the first Breakerspace, to make a recap. I begin.

Matt Hope Wearing Cooling Suit 0 Shaking Hands

I need 10 photos, why 10 photos, because that is the max that Instagram can post and we live in that realtime world now! In this day and age, it is quite difficult to find time to review what happened. We just keep going with what we learned or dumped. However, we do have memories.

Myself Wearing Early Cooling Suit 1, Friend & Matt Hope Wearing Cooling Suit 0

What can I say? My life was much different before I met Matt Hope! There was a time before, and now only a time after. We met at UCSD, in art grad school. I remember the first year grad art intro presentations. Everyone else described what they created and I never forget, well, I hope people forgot the funny projects I presented, but everyone was showing their amazing creations. Come time for Matt to speak, he did something no other person did: while at Winchester, he REMOVED some structural wires on the wall of the grad studio that were not necessary. While everyone else was ADDING, he was REMOVING.

Matt Hope and Barry Threw Working on Cooling Suits at #ROOFZERO, The Clubhouse HK

Zoom forwards to a few weeks ago. Matt and his family, 2 year old son were in Hong Kong doing a very un-Matt-like thing, relaxing during Chinese New Year and enjoying a family vacation. I was super proud of my friend. Now in his early 40’s, we both battled our way through Beijing, both independently arriving in 2007/2008, with our own struggles. And, we both emerged. The big news, other than Matt’s renewed focus on health and family, he had a show in Los Angeles in a few days of his large “guided drawings” setup by supporter Stefan Simchowicz at the Newsstand, a new project space in Beverly Hills. I of course flew to the opening and had a grand rendezvous with my friends. What a breakthrough time nearly 15 years since UCSD (and a story for in-person or another writing :).

Takes two people to put on one suit as seen with Matt Hope, Photo by Christopher Adams

Matt and I spent time together and we decided we should do something in the mold of old from when we were in UCSD, a digital happening. Matt previously came up with the idea of what one could do with all these big almost-free spaces found in St. Louis, convert them into breakerspaces. This is counter to the trend of makerspaces and co-working spaces (which by the way, we have nearly hit peak co-working). Breakerspaces are spaces where people can break down physical items into component parts and use those components to build something else. So we began on Matt’s birthday, Tuesday February 18 with the idea: make a breakerspace in HK during Hong Kong Art Week…

At this point. I will stop. Is this interesting at all? Should I continue this writing? This first part will go into the journal Scale Journal Week 13. Feedback is welcome and I will write more if this is found interesting, ok?

Stack of several prepared Cooling Suits for Transformation

For everyone else, here is the TL;DR recap:

Matt Hope and the Fabricatorz project to collect e-waste and transform it into #zerowaste cooling suits worked. While not easy to do, and much less easy than anticipated, 8 suits were made just in time for a large rain storm on #roofzero, HKWalls The Clubhouse HK. Matt Hope and other breakerspacers then headed to Oui.Gallery for an opening of his guided drawings, cooling suits were worn, and more as part of the Oui.Gallery group show, Cantoco.re.

Oui.Gallery’s Oui.Talk Artist Talk Series with Matt Hope discussing his piece, Food Chain

Breakerspace HK Facts:

  • 34 Days of Discussion and Planning from Feb 18 until March 30, 2019
  • 6 Days of Execution or “Breaking”
  • 40 Days in Total of Breaking :)
  • 3-7 Active Collaborators Each Day of Breaking
  • 8 Cooling Suits Produced
  • 1 Wechat Group with 50 People and growing made
  • 1 Wechat Communication System Explored with Gif Animations
  • 1 Art Gallery Opened, Oui.Gallery HK
  • 1 Initial Art Show Created in Service of that Gallery, “GONG HEI”
  • 1 Group Show, Revival of Cantoco.re Brand and Name
  • 1 New Breakerspace, aka Breakerspace HK or BSHK
  • 3 Parties, #ZEROWASTE #STREET #ART #PARTY, #roofzero happy hour & Cantoco.re Opening
  • 2 E-waste Collection Points: Oui.Gallery and The Clubhouse HK
  • 1 New Cryptocurrency, Hope Coins or “Hopes”
  • 25,920 “Hopes”
  • 2 Venues in one HK: #wastezero at Pedder & Hollywood and #roofzero at The Clubhouse HK
  • 1 Artist Talk, Oui.Talk with 3 Artists Present, Matt Hope, Kingson Chan, and Gianluca Crudele
  • 1 Zerowaste Hike
  • 10 Bags of E-waste Collected and Converted to #zerowaste
  • 7 Partners and Sponsors

Matt Hope’s Entropic Bodies Cooling Suit 0 laid out on the ground

For more information

About Matt Matt Hope

Matt Hope (born 1976, London, U.K.) lives and works in Beijing, China. Hope received his M.F.A. from the University of California, San Diego in 2004. Selected recent solo exhibitions include Art Lights up Life: People’s Power Station – Lighting Up Project, Guangzhou, China, 2016; Sun Dragon Hardware, Ace Gallery, Los Angeles, 2015; and Spectrum Divide, Saamlung Gallery, Hong Kong, China, 2012. Selected recent group exhibitions include Desert Island - Epicenter Projects, Coachella Valley Art Center Indio, California, 2017; Shenzhen Biennale of Contemporary Art, Shenzhen, China, 2017; BI-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture, Shenzhen, China, 2016; BOOSTER: Art Sound Machine, MARTA Herford Contemporary Art Museum, Herford, Germany, 2016; The Solutions, International Design Exhibition, Chengdu Biennale, Chengdu, China, 2011; and What if, Beijing International Design Triennial, China National Museum, Beijing, China, 2011. https://matthope.org

About Jon Phillips

Jon Phillips is Co-Founder of Oui.Gallery and Fabricatorz, a global art technology studio. His projects have been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, SFMoMa, ICA London, OCAT Shenzhen, and featured in Wired, the Washington Post, BBC, Al Jazeera, CNN and the Guardian. He lives in Saint Louis and Hong Kong, and is currently working daily on blockchain projects.