Tiffany Sia

This collection of writings by artist and filmmaker Tiffany Sia (born 1988) gathers six essays that offer a framework for fugitive cinema. Written in the wake of the 2019-20 Hong Kong Protests ignited by the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement, Sia's writings survey the rise of a new documentary vernacular being produced by a wave of emerging filmmakers breaking from the nostalgia of Hong Kong's cinematic golden age. As a practitioner and thinker, Sia has been at the forefront of a nascent generation of artists working to trace social unrest and political crackdowns. Drawing from personal experience and historical study, her writings offer urgent reflections on a cultural landscape changed by censorship and surveillance.

An essential counterpart to her oeuvre, this volume is a critical intervention into global film studies, the politics of film/photographic practices and experimental approaches to documentary. Film stills from filmmakers Chan Tze-woon and the anonymous collective Hong Kong Documentary Filmmakers, photographs by artist An-My Lê and images from Sia's short film The Sojourn (2023) are interspersed between each essay, inviting the reader to consider a cinema by other means.

What is highly unlikely but not impossible?  is informed by themes found in the work of Hiwa K, such as statehood, war, migration, belonging, the effects of neoliberalism and colonialism, home as a concept, language, and the myth of the individual artist. The compendium ranges freely across mediums, drawing together experimental poetry, science fiction, photography, memoir, academic essays, art historical texts, and more. Contributions include a short story by Benjamin Labatut, an excerpt from a lecture by Achille Mbembe, and drawings by Hajra Waheed. Like previous editions in the series, this book brings together a range of voices and mediums to consider some of the most pressing issues of our time.

Contributions by Omar El Akkad, Havin Al-Sîndy, Yto Barrada, Dionne Brand, Deena Chalabi, Nidhal Chamekh, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Ursula K. Le Guin, Raven Chacon and Candice Hopkins, Brian Karl, Hiwa K, Benjamin Labatut, Quinn Latimer, Henri Lefebvre, Mazyar Lotfalian, Peter L. Manuel, Achille Mbembe, Fred Moten, Gabriel Orozco, Jacques Rancière, Man Ray, Rijin Sahakian, Solmaz Sharif, Tiffany Sia, Julietta Singh, Rayyane Tabet, Anton Vidokle, Hajra Waheed