Archives for the future: the 2019 Lennon Walls of Hong Kong

Abstract

This article is concerned with the Lennon Walls of the 2019 Hong Kong protest movement as central spaces for the formation of an ‘archival imagination’ (Hochberg, 2021). Through producing a collection of protest icons connected directly to the movement’s history, the author argues that the visual expression developed from displaying a multiplicity of voices on to displaying ‘visual iconographies’ for ‘collective identification’ (Yates McKee, 2017: 113). She shows how iconic symbols and figures developed on the basis of actual events and protest characters, and how, over time, a particular collection of these figures and symbols came to compose the iconography for the movement. In a sense, the creation of the iconography in itself became a way to archive particular events and figures in a visually recognizable image. In other words, the iconic symbols and figures seen on the protest walls came to archive the movement’s history as it unfolded.