Young Samson

The Chinese banyan (Ficus Microcarpa) is a tree characterized by aerial roots typical of the Hong Kong region. This native species is also embedded in the region's architectural and cultural history, as its aerial roots often envelop buildings and historic walls, creating a hybrid architectural form.

The Kam Tin Tree House (New Territories, Hong Kong) embodies the Microcarpa's character. Originally a public building abandoned during the Qing Dynasty, the house was gradually wrapped by the aerial roots of the Chinese banyan that grew beside it, creating what is nowadays a popular movie shoot location. In Samson Young’s Inversions (2026), this hybrid architecture is filmed and put into dialogue with frames from the ending fight scene of The Drunken Master, an early martial arts movie, with footage from the Tree House and from the film superimposing in the work, putting into dialogue two historical elements of the Hong Kong landscape transformed in contemporary times as part of the movie industry.

Through algorithmic modifications and percussion music performed by David Cossin, these filmic and historical layers blend, transforming them once again through the most recent development of Hong Kong’s landscape: the broad presence of tech companies and advanced technological research labs.

Just as the aerial roots of the Banyan, Inversions enwraps itself in multiple layers of meaning, in which martial arts and an ecological landmark are transformed by cinema, technology, the architecture they encounter, and the perpetual presence of a rapidly evolving landscape such as Hong Kong’s.

Inversions (2026) was realized with the support of OGR Torino

Iacopo Prinetti