thank you everyone for taking the time
to come out here I know it’s a bit far
it’s out in the middle of nowhere
and you’ve taken your lovely Saturday
afternoon to sit in here and listen to
us with with masks so I’ve made it a bit
easier for you we’ve decided to wear
masks so you don’t see how ugly faces
also the reason we’re wearing masks is I
want to reassure you that we are not
wanted by the police
we’re not terrorists and we’re not into
any kind of kinky fetishes this is not
fifty shades of gray this is 50 shades
of Ted and we’re here to talk about
shade 49th which is urban exploration we
are H K of X which stands for Hong Kong
urban exploration and we’re a group
dedicated to preserving and documenting
abandoned sites across the Asia Pacific
region where one of the best-known
groups in the area
and we’re a diverse team hailing from
all the efforts of the world my name is
Jenkins and I am an urban explorer and
my name is ghost obviously ghost is not
my real name
I wish it were but what is a name really
but a label ascribed to us by society a
label which we don’t have much control
over unless we go through the processes
of changing it which no one really ever
does I think in Hong Kong some people
can actually choose their name I’ve seen
people called like Mickey Mouse and
stuff like that weird names all the time
so I’m choosing ghost this is obviously
a play on gwai-lo
because I am the white member of the
team I’m the token white guy you know
not the token black guy the token white
guy anyway so this label that we have
this name that’s given to us by society
is also much in the same way we don’t
have a choice over it much in the same
way that we don’t have a choice over the
jobs that we do and the society that we
live in we live in a what is essentially
a broken system a system that takes how
we live we are made to pay taxpayer
money without choice we have to that’s
what you have to do and we live within
these control limitations and
restrictions laws restrict us from what
we can do and where we can and cannot go
so in this society our public taxpayer
money that we pay is usually it adds up
and they use it to pay for
infrastructure they use it to pay for
public services which is nice we get
some nice parks that hang out in but
often
we get a lot of spaces which we don’t
get access to and I find this quite
criminal really so as a group we’ve
decided to take it upon ourselves to
explore these kinds of spaces whether it
be infrastructure built with public
money whether it be some abandoned
school or abandoned site left on its own
and I’m sure when you guys were coming
out on the MTR there’s just loads of
empty land and there’s a lot of
buildings which had just left there
derelict so we create alternate meanings
by exploring these places and
documenting them essentially we’ve been
described as extremist anthropologists
ethnographers hardcore history ographers
psycho geographers trespassing
terrorists and more essentially we are
urban explorers but what is urban
exploration in the broadest sense it is
the exploration of abandoned man-made
structures it serves completely
different contexts and different
functions but for me personally it is a
form of escapism but of course there are
the reasons why people do it in the past
couple of years members from our group
have traveled extensively across the
Asia Pacific region and documented such
sites as schools military bases caves
and tunnels and it’s been really
interesting bringing these stories back
to Hong Kong because there is no other
place like it from its colonial history
to the sci-fi skyscrapers the document
that’s very wharf our city today Hong
Kong is a force to be reckoned with it
is also a city of dualities there is a
unique contrast here between dark and
light all the new East and West and fast
and slow now I grew up in Australia
where because the topography is mostly
flatland when you build you tend to
build out and in Hong Kong because of
the limited space you’ve only got two
directions up or down and the most
amazing thing about being in Hong Kong
for exploration is there is no immediate
sense of danger
in Australia for example the abandoned
buildings tend to be looted with
syringes and other forms of drug
paraphernalia Hong Kong really is a city
of extremes as these stats show it is
home to almost 7 over 7 million people
there’s 200 Islands whoo-hoo who knew
and it’s one of the most densely
populated places in the world it is also
because of this it is one of the it has
one of the highest gaps between the rich
and the poor the disparity between the
advantage and the disadvantage is just
shocking and I’m sure some of you have
seen the
when you walk around poor places like
teickhoff choi toka one there’s really
old buildings of people living in
subdivided flats there was even a fire
last week in which a poor old man died
r.i.p the cat survived go figure
they were actually doing they were they
were doing CPR to the cat i don’t know
if any of you guys saw this in the
chinese media it was on Apple daily so
thank God the cat survived are I paid to
the old man but anyway this is the kind
of state that these poor people live in
and the government and the people in
power they should be putting a roof over
these people’s heads it’s terrible and
basically it’s claustrophobic when
you’re living in this society this is
Thai culture these are some old
buildings that we’ve seen that have been
there for the past five years people
have been kicked out of their houses I
don’t know whether they’ve been put up
in a government house probably smaller
than the one they would have had and
I’ve even heard stories of an old
grandma who is living in her home for
about 80 years with her family suddenly
she got kicked out and she didn’t know
what to do she had all her stuff she
didn’t know what to do so she ended up
committing suicide because she had no
other choice her whole life her whole
system had just been delighted just
destroyed like that in a moment
so Hong Kong’s dire housing problem and
apparently and shortage is caused by
cronies and acute cronyism
and acute collusive capitalism and
basically the reason for this is that
there’s a the government has a lot of
sites which they are sitting on and
greedy real estate developers
monopolizing developers land estate
agents they are sitting on like hordes
and hordes of land and we’ve been
exploring and we found oh look at this
abandoned school it’s not too far from
here look at this fence bill look at
this site and look at this look at this
look at this these are all empty and we
found hundreds of these statistically
there’s over a hundred abandoned schools
in Hong Kong now why are some people
without a house when all these places
are just sitting empty gathering dust
nature is taking over so basically the
government needs to stop acting like a
business they need to stop handing all
the land to all these greedy property
developers who just sit on it waiting
for it to reach a premium and then they
are there sell it or they build
miniscule tiny impetuses flats for
people to live in and these rich people
they buy them up and basically the local
residents can’t afford them yeah now
often a lot of these abandoned sites
sitting in err former glory
there is a melancholy to them because
they are in effect forgotten dreams and
often these forgotten dreams these
sights are hidden right in front of our
eyes so for example there is a void
between Star Street and ship Street in
Wan Chai where there is a supposedly
haunted mansion yeah and entering these
void is like playing a real-life
videogame now why a quick show of hands
who here has noticed all of these
abandoned structures littered across the
city anyone right so quite a few of you
which makes the sheer number of them
that actually exist in this city
unbelievable
which is the theme of today’s event
clever it really is unbelievable I mean
I as I said I found one hundred over a
hundred sites we’ve explored a hundred
sites together at least which have
ranged from prisons as we listed earlier
all the band and schools old abandoned
public home care homes and history is
being steamrolled and demolished right
in front of our eyes sometimes we’ve
been the last people to stand inside an
apartment building or a school or a site
or even a hundred-year-old mansion I
remember before it got knocked down
that’s a privilege that we had we were
the last people there and so what we do
is we have taken it upon ourselves to
document these places and immortalize
them we do it through documentation we
preserve them through documentation if
you like through photography drone
ography and all other kinds of tactics
that we’ll use and when you’re in an old
historical building there’s just
something about them they’re almost
alive like you can you can taste the
history you know compare this old
building which is about 6070 years old
that’s just option one near Soho to this
brand-new spanking building a novelty
which has more soul which has more
character which was built with care by
artisans by craftsmen which was built
for money by capitalism with you know
silver lining to reflect luxury you know
and it’s manufactured it’s prefabricated
that was probably made in faster time
than that was made but that is a lot
more beautiful and that’s probably gonna
get knocked down one day now like my
Gotham City Hong Kong is a character in
and of itself and every location that we
enter we treat like a character with its
own history and its own backstory every
location is treated with the utmost
respect and we do so by following with
very specific set of rules which are as
follows take nothing but pictures leave
nothing but footprints
and kill nothing but time now with this
thought process in mind I’d like to talk
a little bit about our particular brand
of urban exploration within the context
of the Ted acronym so technology
everything from body mounted cameras to
drones and quad copters technology has
very quickly become the best friend of
the urban explorer we’re now able to
achieve the kinds of shots that we only
dreamt about a couple of years ago
entertainment I spoke a little bit
earlier about Eric’s being a form of
escapism for me and growing up as a kid
in the 90s my favorite form of escapism
was point-and-click adventure games
completely obsessed and in particular
the mystery and exploration facets of
that genre and from the content creation
side of things we are one of the only
urban exploration groups to regularly
produce video content and we do so to an
inform and to entertain and lastly
design they say that you decorate time
with music and you decorate space with
art in urban exploration the space is
the art and we’ve been lucky enough as a
team to have a group of people comprised
entirely of content creators from
journalists videographers and designers
and being able to view this particular
type of history lens through these
respective type that’s right these
respective sets of eyes has been an
unbelievable experience so I would like
to end by asking you all the question
picture something that is personal and
memorable to you where this is a jewelry
an old photograph maybe a body part even
and now what if someone came along and
stole that item from you cut off your
finger maybe not cool right that
wouldn’t be cool but this is what is
happening to history in our city these
historical sites belong to the people
and the reason that history and heritage
is important is because we need these
places to tell us what we were what we
were before and we need to learn from
them from future generations they we can
teach them what how the world was before
if the society was all the same all
brand-new Starbucks and shopping malls
and everything like that it wouldn’t be
interesting it would be homogeneous they
were just all way the same and this we
need an ecosystem it needs to have I’m
not saying every historical building
should be preserved but I think the
government policy needs to be rethought
a little bit if you like and that’s why
I heritage matters so I urge all of you
next time you see
or old abandoned building maybe a
mention more an old car even on the
roadside spare a thought and think about
how it came to be there and its history
I’m not asking you to trespass I’m not
aiding and abetting I don’t want to be
an accessory to your crimes okay that’s
why I’m wearing the mask all right but
you know you might just find something
about yourself and in exploring your
environment because whenever I do
something personally whenever I do
something unpredictable and surprising
when I’m using all my senses in these
spaces when I’m exploring them it often
leads to an interesting unexpected
outcome if you already know about the
predictable future you’re living in the
past so spare a thought to your
surroundings an environment and you
might just learn a bit more about
yourself as well we’ve been a chair of
it thank you [Applause]