Miming Memes through the Waterways: The coded bodily communications in Hong Kong and beyond

Principle Investigator：Hsiu-ju Stacy Lo, Postdoctoral Researcher, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University

2019 shall be marked as the year of “manifestations” as well as the onset of the Covid-19
pandemic. What the Chinese Communist Party called the “political virus” originating in Hong
Kong spawned a profusion of what I call “mimed memes”—embodied communications and
coded expressions—developed in an environment of increased digital surveillance and
censorship. Demonstrators from the pro-independence rallies in Catalonia, the milk tea alliance in
Thailand and India, and to Extinction Rebellion everywhere were taking lessons from the
decentralized, networked and leaderless anti-government protests in Hong Kong, widely known
as the “Be Water” Movement. Inspired by a quote from the homegrown action hero Bruce Lee:
“Water can flow or it can crash,” the protest movement—ignited by the city government’s
attempt to pass a bill to allow extradition to mainland China—mobilized the protesters in
extraordinary ways. Mobilization under the increasingly tense circumstances required a
customized language and bespoke toolbox to navigate the rapidly changing scene. As such, the
everyday practices and innovations grown out of the protest movement carry implications for a
digitally altered consciousness of body and language (in the broadest sense of the term to include
visual and verbal). The virtually spread “memes”, defined by the updated Oxford English
dictionary as “an image, video, pieces of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied
and spread rapidly by Internet users, often with slight variations” propel physical developments
in the real world forward. From cyberspace to the streets, a meme aesthetic has been co-created
to embolden the movement followers and to make the average person part of the protesting
crowd.
The evolving methods, tactics, and the expressions invented in the so-called “Be Water”
Movement bear witness to a turbulent global context where human actions and communications
have increasingly come under digital surveillance, commercially or politically. The 2019-2020
protests in Hong Kong demonstrated not only collective creativity, but also tactical fluidity in
response to the ever-shifting conditions on the streets and in cyberspace. Appropriation of these
tactical technologies has since furnished other playbooks, benign or malevolent. Examples
include the “infodemic” amid the coronavirus pandemic, US Capitol riots and the “meme stock”
trading mania surrounding GameStop and Bitcoin. By investigating a myriad of “waterways” that
the protesters and other inspired individuals have adopted in the resistance movements and the
everyday life, this study examines the sensorial interconnectedness of artificial intelligence, the
human body, and expression, and to critically consider the “meme” aesthetic against a backdrop
of heightened surveillance and censorship.