DRAWING THE LINE
In dialogue with Tobias Berger
FVTVRIST Magazine // Text by Anna S.
9 March 2026
«Draw a straight line and follow it.»
La Monte Young
Wong Chuk Hang was once a district of factories and cold storage warehouses. Today, it is quietly becoming one of Hong Kong's most unexpected cultural addresses. And somewhere in that transformation, a new kind of art space has taken root.
For a city that has spent decades shedding its own skin — economically, politically, culturally — the question of what an art space is for has never been more urgent. Few people are better positioned to answer it than Tobias Berger, a curator who has left fingerprints on nearly every significant institution in Hong Kong's contemporary art scene: Para Site, M+, Tai Kwun Contemporary.
But institutions, however prestigious, have limits. Which is why Tobias Berger is now building something altogether different.
As Co-Founder and Curatorial Director of Serakai Studio, he has quietly launched GOLD in Wong Chuk Hang — part contemporary salon, part cultural test lab, part deliberate provocation. The space refuses easy categorization, moving between exhibitions, design, publishing, and interdisciplinary experiment with the restlessness of a city that has never learned to sit still.
Its inaugural exhibition, CERTAINLY, opens with a dare borrowed from Fluxus legend La Monte Young: draw a straight line and follow it. In Tobias Berger's hands, that deceptively simple instruction becomes something far more charged — a meditation on uncertainty as creative method, and on not-knowing as perhaps the most honest posture any cultural institution can adopt right now.
In conversation with FVTVRIST, Tobias Berger unpacks what Hong Kong's shifting identity demands of its art spaces, why experimentation has become a survival strategy, and why he's betting that embracing uncertainty might be the most radical thing a curator can do today.
Santiago Sierra, 250 cm Line Tattooed on Six Remunerated People, Espacio Aglutinador, Havana, Cuba, December 1999 Film, Performance, Photography. Image courtesy of Estudio Santiago Sierra and GOLD.
Fvtvrist: How would you describe Hong Kong’s cultural identity today?
Tobias Berger: You don’t start with easy questions. Hong Kong was built on incredible energy. On one side, the arts community still shows resilience and is trying to make the best out of the situation. But we cannot deny that we have lost a lot of talented artists, practitioners, curators due to the changed political environment.
These two realities now have to be balanced in a new way. The mood is different from what it was before COVID, nevertheless, Hong Kong remains one of the most exciting and important art hubs not only in Asia but globally. The identity is still being renegotiated. At the moment, Hong Kong is searching for a new balance between resilience and reinvention.
What responsibility does a project like GOLD have toward the cultural landscape of the city?
In my previous roles at Para Site, M+, and Tai Kwun Contemporary there was enormous responsibility. Those institutions were built in moments when Hong Kong had very little international contemporary art infrastructure.
There were clear gaps in the cultural landscape and clear objectives to fulfill. The beauty of this new project is that we are not responsible to any large institution. We are entering a city that already has amazing museums, galleries, and contemporary art spaces. Because of that, we can be more free and more experimental. So rather than seeing this as a responsibility, we see it as a privilege.
You often describe Serakai Studio as a kind of cultural test lab.
Serakai Studio functions as the think tank for Serakai, which is primarily a developer working in the built environment. In a way, we can act as a laboratory for ideas.
We focus on cities like Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Bangkok, looking at how art, design, music, architecture, and other cultural practices interact with urban life. The freedom we have allows us to experiment. We can bring together commercial and non commercial elements in ways that would not always be possible within larger institutions. For example, if an artwork can be sold, that’s good for the artist. But we would never choose something because it sells. Instead we are testing ideas. We don’t know whether everything will work.
Uncertainty creates opportunity.
Opening a new space around the concept of uncertainty seems risky.
Actually I would say it is the least risky thing you can do. If you start with something monumental or overly ambitious, you create enormous expectations immediately. Starting with uncertainty allows the project to evolve more organically.
South Ho, Into Light 03, 2026, archival inkjet print, Courtesy of Blindspot Gallery
How do you measure success for a space like this?
Success in art is always long term.
You know a project was successful when people still talk about it five or ten years later. When artists you supported continue to develop and do important work.
In many ways I am more proud of how people who worked with me have grown than of any single exhibition I have curated.
You cannot measure success through ticket numbers or visitor statistics.
Captions L-R: Tozer Pak Sheung Chuen, Using the Light of the Waning Moon to Draw a Full Moon, 2007. Peter Robinson, Untitled, Work on Paper, 2026,
The opening exhibition CERTAINLY revolves around uncertainty. How did the concept take shape?
For me it started with the instruction based works of the Fluxus tradition, particularly artists like La Monte Young. There is one line from La Monte Young that stayed with me for a long time: draw a straight line and follow it. For many years I understood that instruction as having a goal and simply pursuing it. Only later did I realize that it is actually impossible ato draw a perfectly straight line. That realization introduces the idea of uncertainty.
I also included a work I have shown several times in different contexts: Santiago Sierra’s 250 cm line tattooed on six remunerated people. What fascinates me about that work is how differently it is perceived depending on the cultural context.
When I showed it in Germany in the 1990s, tattoos were becoming fashionable. In New Zealand tattoos carried strong cultural meaning. In Korea tattoo studios were almost illegal at that time. Each context transformed the work completely.
That uncertainty of meaning became an important starting point.
At one moment I realized that many of the works I had selected were black and white. So I embraced that visual direction and allowed the exhibition to develop as a monochromatic environment.
How do you see Hong Kong within the broader cultural landscape of Asia today?
Asia is a very complex idea.
If you think about it geographically, Asia stretches from the eastern outskirts of Moscow all the way to Japan and Southeast Asia. Within that enormous region there are many different cultures and histories. Hong Kong today is also trying to find its place within this wider Asian context.
Serakai Studio also publishes the journal CONG. What role does it play within your program?
With CONG we wanted to create a platform for long form cultural thinking. Each article runs between three and five thousand words.
We explore architecture, AI, fashion, music, and other cultural phenomena shaping cities in Asia.
In many conversations with artists we realized that the most interesting discussions rarely revolve purely around art. They move across disciplines architecture, design, technology, fashion.
We felt that there was not enough space for this type of journalism in Asia, so the journal became a way to support writers and thinkers working on these topics. The printed format was also important. Certain types of essays and artist projects simply work better in print than on a screen.
CERTAINLY at GOLD, Exhibition View, Image Courtesy of Serakai Studio
What kind of future do you envision for GOLD?
The first exhibition is a fairly traditional contemporary art exhibition. But the following projects will be very different. One upcoming exhibition will combine art, furniture design, and fashion. It will function almost like a concept store, but curated with the seriousness of an exhibition.
Later we are considering sound installations, music related projects, and exhibitions connected to records and visual art. So GOLD will not be limited to a single exhibition format.
It is inspiring to see how you are rethinking cultural space through experimentation and new formats.
It is a very special situation to be able to work with this level of freedom. Changes and restrictions can also open new possibilities.
And Hong Kong with neighborhoods like Wong Chuk Hang provides a strong environment for this kind of experimentation.
One of the most beautiful aspects of the city is the way the art community interacts. That sense of shared cultural community has been very important for Hong Kong over the past fifteen years.
CERTAINLY at GOLD, Exhibition View, Image Courtesy of Serakai Studio
About Serakai
Serakai is a forward-thinking investor in the built environment, dedicated to creating successful places embedded in neighborhoods anchored by art and culture in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Bangkok and beyond. Our multidisciplinary board and team have played pivotal roles in shaping some of Asia’s most dynamic retail, mixed-use, and cultural landmarks. Serakai Studio is Serakai’s cultural think tank and R&D hub which publishes, produces, and generates insights that shape all of our activities. Through Serakai Studio, we are also developing a new type of place: the contemporary salon. Serakai is committed to advancing the broader cultural discourse in Asia, improving the built environments in which we operate, and enhancing life and social sustainability in the cities we are proud to call home.
