Lang, it transpires, was influenced by seeing New York in its nascent period of modernization: "The film was born from my first sight of the skyscrapers in New York in October 1924 … the buildings seemed to be a vertical sail, scintillating and very light, a luxurious backdrop, suspended in the dark sky to dazzle, distract and hypnotize."
Metropolis was the preface to what would become cyberpunk. The genre, from the outset, has depicted radical technological advances-plugged-in consciousness, androids that are indistinguishable from people-and worlds divided by unequal access to wealth and resources, where the multinational corporations, the sovereign states, the hackers, and the criminal underworld all vie for control.
2019 is the year when numerous iconic cyberpunk films including Blade Runner (1982) and Akira (1988) are set. After decades of cyberpunk influence across a broad range of visual and written culture, the new Hong Kong exhibition Phantom Plane: Cyberpunk in the Year of the Future (until Jan 4 at JC Contemporary in Tai Kwun), considers the hold that the genre retains on our collective imagination by assessing how its tropes have bled into art and visual culture. It also explores and revisits how the genre's aesthetics and futurisms can be seen from Hong Kong, one model of the "meta-city"-a sprawling urban space that's just as virtual as it is real.
