The Aesthetics of Sand: Reclaiming Hong Kong’s Unsettled Grounds

Sand is a key material foundation of modern cities. In Hong Kong, city founded in British mercantile imperialism, the extraction sand needed for construction and reclamation projects has always been tied up with violent dispossession. Experimenting forms poetics postcolonial new materialist critical theory, thinking sand’s distinctive materialities drift, this paper develops speculative critique Kong’s sandy infrastructure. colonial post-colonial authority legitimized by continual process surfacing resurfacing, claiming reclaiming. By evoking saltation, one mechanisms movement, uncovers utopian potential unsettled qualities, searching ethics ground-down grounds.