Speakers

Presentation Title: Mature Creativity and Well-being: Interdisciplinary Reflections on Aging and Creativity

This paper explores interdisciplinary perspectives on aging and creativity, integrating medical, psychological, and philosophical insights. While aging affects cognition, creativity remains resilient, enriched by emotional depth and life experience. Psychologists highlight how aging fosters authentic, liberated expression and support well-being through identity exploration and social engagement. Philosophical reflections, including Confucian and Taoist views, frame aging as a spiritual ascent—an opportunity to embody wisdom and contribute to harmony. The paper argues that aging is not decline but transformation, where creativity matures and flourishes. A famous Chinese poem on aging is also examined to illustrate these themes poetically and culturally.

Presentation Title: Practicing Care: The Role of Everyday Aesthetics

Care in the popular imagination generally refers to an ethical relationship between care givers and care recipients, who are characterized as vulnerable and helpless. This presentation advocates a paradigm change from this one-directional model of care to mutual support and interdependence. Furthermore, it calls attention to the critical role everyday aesthetics plays in guiding care practice, an often-neglected consideration, whether it regards our environment and artifacts within or body aesthetics. Even if our survival and rights are guaranteed, a good life is not possible unless we collectively engage in creating a world, both social and material, which is expressive of care.

Co-presentation Title:

Everyday Aesthetics in Hong Kong: Pak Sheung-chuen’s Conceptual Artwork as Engagement and Intervention

With Saito’s theoretical framework of everyday aesthetics, this presentation analyses Hong Kong artist Pak Sheung-chuen’s various conceptual artworks that negotiate with boundaries amongst various spaces and senses. Pak’s “invisible travel” in Malaysia with his eyes blindfolded exemplify the limitations of experience-based aesthetics that are primarily visual-oriented and site-specific. Pak will demonstrate his unique practice of “rice rubbing” that metamorphizes a piece of cooked rice on one’s fingertips creates a novel medium with a natural object for the human subjects to reconnect their inner and outer worlds. Pak’s multi-sensory experimental projects with neurodivergent artists have also become an effective social intervention to enable and empower SEN students and their caretakers.

Keywords: everyday aesthetics, Pak Sheung-chuen, conceptual art

Workshop Theme: Each step counts in life: no fear and no regret

Presentation Title: The spiritual dimension in performing arts

This talk explores the spiritual essence of performing arts, moving beyond technical skill to connect body, mind, and soul. We will discuss how aligning body and mind sharpens focus, enabling authentic, resonant performances. Staying true to oneself fosters a delicate balance of opposites—control versus freedom, strength versus vulnerability—unleashing creative potential. By transcending perceived limitations, performers achieve a state of flow, fully present in the moment. Join us to discover how this spiritual approach cultivates transformative performances, creating authentic connections between artists and audiences through shared, transcendent experiences.

Presentation Title: In praise of slowness

With regard to practicing Tai Chi, I will discuss three aspects of well-being that I consider to be nourishing for life:

-          the physical (aesthetic)

-          the mental (spiritual)

-          the social (community-building)

In addition, I would like to emphasize that this is the practice of a martial art. It differs from pure gymnastics in that it involves threefold cultivation: of postures, of how we treat our own bodies, and of developing a mindset, which also affects our relationship and attitude towards others. Learning this martial art therefore requires a willingness to undergo slow change on various levels

Presentation Title: Embodied Musicality: Wellbeing Through Community Music

Communicative musicality is a concept borrowed from psychoanalysis, emphasizing our innate musical and communicative ability in the interactive social environment. Musicality can be heard and also be seen. Through movement, breath, and intention, one circulates the vital energy within oneself to interact with the outside world through shared rhythms and patterns. Our heartbeat and breathing can be observed with musical chronobiology, interconnecting our internal biological rhythms with vibrations and periodicities in nature. Hence, embodiment is about experiencing time, sensing the quality of time we are in. Through different stages of our life journey, to embrace change and to make choice for personal growth meant to be embodied in one's actions (or non-action) appropriate to that moment.

In search for societal applications on embodying musicality, the concept is applied through community music, which uses participatory activities to review pedagogy in studying music, and to explore the link between music engagement and individual/collective wellbeing. Activities designed to help understand psychic changes, such as those brought on by ageing, seek for opening new dialogues on issues concerning intergenerational creativity and sustainability. Practical case studies, like those from past and current projects led by the WBL Music Unit of the Lingnan University, demonstrate music’s therapeutic potential. These projects use intergenerational collaborations to foster new dialogues, positioning music as a vital tool for arts and wellbeing initiatives.

Presentation Title: Music, Singing, and Body Awareness

Music study, especially for students of Hong Kong family, has not been the most popular choice among all of the tertiary education majors, despite the large number of pupils who excel playing musical instruments and singing in their primary and secondary school years. Many regard music performances as simply a form of entertainment. In this presentation, I will explain why music, especially serious music, is nothing like entertainment. Music, for many, represents the meaning of life and existence. By using examples of well-known composers, as well as my performing experience, I will share my personal musical journey of how to rediscover my “identity” as a Hong Kong musician among the Western classical music world. In addition, I will discuss why professional singers, just like athletes, must understand their physical condition. Furthermore, researches have been done in showing how singing can have positive influence on wellbeing, and I will share these points from the perspective of a classical singer.

Presentation Title: At Ease in an Entangled World, The Yijing in Contemporary Cultural Production

Wellbeing—a state of contentment and equilibrium—can be understood as a personal quest, a communal quest, or a collective enterprise. It is multidimensional, multifaceted, and multifunctional. In this talk, I would like to focus on two elements of achieving wellbeing: position and resonance. I will explain these two elements by analysing Tai 泰 hexagram (Peace, 11) of the Book of Changes. Symbolizing the unity of heaven and earth, Tai looks like a perfect situation where everything is in good order. Yet, Tai is limited by the interaction of two entrenched forces: the bloc of three yin lines at the top and the bloc of three yang lines at the bottom. In this lecture, I will compare Tai with its opposite, Pi 否 (Standstill, 12) and its extension through an exchange of lines, Jiji 既濟 (After Completion, 64). Through this comparison, I argue that wellbeing must be achieved in creative and collaborative way, because everything in this world in entangled.

Keywords: Book of Changes, contentment, equilibrium, Tai hexagram, wellbeing

Presentation Title: Understanding Chinese Archery through the Book of Change

The art of archery, a core component of the Six Arts in Confucianism, serves as a profound medium for self-cultivation and philosophical exploration. This article examines the well-being of Chinese archery through the lens of the Book of Change and related Confucian texts, integrating personal practice to bridge the gap between textual understanding and lived experience. Historically, archery evolved from a practical hunting skill to a martial art and, eventually, to a ritualistic and philosophical practice embedded in Confucian education. Drawing on the Analects and the Book of Rites, this study highlights how archery transcends physical prowess, emphasizing balance, self-correction, and acceptance of uncertainty. The Book of Change teaches individuals to navigate an ever-changing world by embracing uncertainty, opening themselves to opportunities, and facing challenges with resilience. Similarly, the physical act of drawing a bow in archery mirrors this philosophy, as the stretching motion opens the chest muscles, symbolizing the repeated opening of the self to new possibilities and renewal. Through daily practice, the archer embodies the principle of continuous self-renewal, aligning with the Confucian ideal of Dao (道), De (德), and Ren (仁). This exploration underscores how archery cultivates inner harmony, adaptability, and the strength to face life's uncertainties with grace and openness.

Presentation title: Culture for Sustainable Cities

In an era of climate change, where each year is the hottest on record, typhoons strike in December, ocean resources are depleted, glaciers vanish, virgin forests are razed, and species face extinction, the question arises: what role does culture play?

As the world sets “Sustainable Development Goals,” have we considered culture’s contribution? How can culture help cities achieve sustainability? This lecture proposes three actions— advocacy, practice, and conservation— to enable everyone to use culture as a pathway toward sustainable development.