The City, Bird Wings and Insect Songs

Kate Cheung is a Hong Kong-based interdisciplinary artist whose practice revolves around slowness, presence, and the perception of time. She approaches slow processes of making and looking as a means of cultivating mindfulness and inhabiting the present moment, seeking to reveal the underlying connections between memories, environments, relationships, and forms of life that may appear separate yet remain deeply intertwined. These inquiries unfold across moving image, installation, thread-based works, artbooks, and writing.

be623719@gmail.com, Instagram

INTERDISCIPLINARY PROJECT

The City, Bird Wings and Insect Songs 城巿、鳥飛與蟲鳴

2024 - present

interdisciplinary project
2024 - present

The City, Bird Wings and Insect Songs is a long-term documentary project rooted in sustained observation of urban ecology and the poetics of vulnerability. Turning attention to the small, the overlooked, and the easily forgotten, the project traces the lives of birds, insects, and other non-human inhabitants as they navigate a world increasingly shaped by human activity.

More than a documentary record, the work unfolds as a visual and poetic narrative, one that lingers in the margins of the city, attending to what persists in the gaps: a bird negotiating a concrete ledge, an insect clinging to an artificial surface, a plant threading through pavement. These moments of quiet endurance are not incidental, they are the subject. The project proposes that the resilience of small organisms within urban environments is not merely a biological fact, but a condition that speaks to broader shared vulnerabilities between species, between the natural and the built, between fragility and survival.

The City, Bird Wings and Insect Songs invites a renewed attentiveness to the non-human lives unfolding alongside our own, and ask what it might mean to belong to the ecosystem rather than govern it, to be not its maker, but as one of its many inhabitants learning to endure.

《城市、鳥飛與蟲鳴》是一個長期進行的藝術計畫，根植於對城市生態與脆弱詩意的持續觀察。計畫將注視那些細小、被忽略、容易消逝的存在，追蹤鳥類、昆蟲與其他非人類生命，如何在一個愈來愈由人類活動所形塑的世界中，找到自己的生存方式。

此計畫不單是紀錄，而是以視覺與詩意的敘事進行。在城市的邊緣徘徊，凝視那些在縫隙中持續生長的事物。鳥在石屎簷篷上落腳，昆蟲攀附在人造建築，植物從磚瓦的縫隙中伸出，這些靜默的堅韌並非偶然，它們正是城市生態核心所在。此計畫希望提出：城市中微小生物的韌性不只是生物學的事實，更是一種關於共同脆弱性的處境——跨越物種、跨越自然與人造之間，介於脆弱與存活之間。

《城市、鳥飛與蟲鳴》邀請觀者重新感知那些與我們並行存在的生命，並叩問，若我們不再以系統的支配者自居，而是作為其中一個同樣在學習如何存活的生命，可何以重新思考自身在生態系統中的位置，而非支配它。

Photozine
2025

First published at
The 3rd Hong Kong Photobook Festival
第三屆香港攝影書節

The photozine marks the humble beginnings of a long-term project The City, Bird Wings and Insect Songs 城巿、鳥飛與蟲鳴 , which rooted in sustained observation of urban ecology and the poetics of vulnerability.

Tracing the lives of birds, insects, and plants as they navigate a world shaped by human activity, the work unfolds as a visual and poetic narrative, lingering in the city's margins, attending to what quietly persists in the gaps. The project proposes that the resilience of small organisms speaks to broader shared vulnerabilities between species, between the natural and the built. It invites a renewed attentiveness to non-human lives, and asks what it means to belong to an ecosystem, not govern it.