"The Hong Kong Showcase Box" is a viewing box suspended in space. The built-in flatscreen monitor shows a loop of “The Hong Kong Showcase” film. Viewing boxes (so-called Zograscopes) were traditionally devices for producing optical illusions and/or intensifying visual impressions. Because the image is set in a dark field and is illuminated from within the flatscreen, the sense of space of significantly magnified. The sound is also more intense, due to the box’s special acoustics. The installation thus amplifies an intentionally sensual space-time effect: “The world is everything that is the case.” (Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus logico- philosophicus, Sentence 1). The Showcase: a Case Study, and the viewing box: a window on the cosmopolitanized world.

A zograscope (Guckkasten / viewing box) is a exhibiting/viewing device that allows one to look inside, offering the viewer illustrations with deceptively realistic perspective depth. During the second half of the nineteenth century, the zograscope became a favorite carnival attraction all over Europe. These zograscope pictures, showing not only European places of interest but also exotic scenes and theatrical tableaux, influenced the image of the “wide world” among all social classes. The zograscope was therefore among the first mass media. (translated from German Wikipedia article “Guckkasten” - 2009.07.20)

“The world is everything that is the showcase.” Living in a globalized world - a case study.
(loosely based on Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus logico-philosophicus, sentence no.1)