Charlotte Frost takes a selfie of sorts, raising an origami umbrella to the night sky in Hong Kong during the Umbrella Revolution protests. Credit: Charlotte Frost

Charlotte Frost is a friend and collaborator. The two of us have been working on a project about criticism, and so are often in touch with one another's art-world doings through various channels, directly and indirectly, online. Charlotte (@charlottefrost on Twitter) is teaching art and criticism at the School of Creative Media at the City University of Hong Kong and was previously an international fellow at the Center for 21st Century Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is from London.

When Hong Kong's Umbrella Revolution began to unfold, I knew it would be interesting to see some of it through Charlotte's eyes, and those of her students, who were already out in the world creating criticism in forms that are native tot the Internet. Charlotte sees herself not only as a critic but as a digital critic. We started a conversation via a Google document when the protests were getting started. Here is most of it.

Mary Louise: Charlotte, how important are the aesthetics of the #umbrellarevolution, particularly given a target audience of various languages?

Charlotte: The aesthetics of the Umbrella Revolution are an important part of how the messages of the movement are carried around the city, across communities and out to the rest of the world. However I'd be hesitant to say they are intentionally global or cross-cultural or that the rest of the world is somehow a "target audience." Actually, much of what is on show here is very local to Hong Kong.

There are English (and even German, Spanish, Hindi...) signage at the protest sites and there are of course many references drawn from different cultures. One of the theme songs for the protests is from Les Miserables (although it has been translated into Cantonese and adapted to the situation here), there is a banner that quotes John Lennon's "Imagine," and the yellow ribbon is a universal symbol of suffrage. But some of the core symbols are anchored to Hong Kong, Cantonese and aspects of South Asian culture. Let's look at a few of them.

The Umbrella: The umbrella itself is often wrongly thought of as a quintessentially British symbol but, historically, it belongs to the Chinese as its inventor and today its mass manufacturer. Here umbrellas protect you not just from rain but from the sun and sometimes have added UV deflection. As a result you see them everywhere and they form the visual culture of Hong Kong streets alongside it's neon signs, endless high-rises, wooden birdcages, red lanterns and junk boats. After the police attacks on the 28th of September, the umbrella found a new use: tear gas protection.

Numbers: Numbers hold great significance in Chinese culture and they also feature heavily in the protest art. 689 and 926 are important representative codes. 689 refers to the number of votes CY Leung received (out of a possible 1,200) to gain power in 2012. The number both refers to CY himself and to the idea of an already flawed democracy. People collecting refuse charge about the protest sites inviting people to cast rubbishy votes into their trash cans — often plastered with signs of this code. 926 is the date the street protests started (a week earlier student class boycotts began and used the code/hashtag #922).

The Wolf: There is also the IKEA wolf which makes several local references. This Swedish plush toy was created to represent the wolf character in Little Red Ridinghood. However when it's Swedish name 'Lufsig' (in Swedish: to lumber) was translated for Chinese markets it ended up being called something which passes for a swear word in Cantonese. CY Leung has been variously depicted as a vampire and Beijing's obedient baby but is also often referred to as the wolf not only because he is viewed as a cunning predator but because his name looks like the Chinese character for 'wolf.' These stuffed animals sold out across IKEA stores months back based on this multiple connection to Cantonese and Hong Kong political culture — and one was even thrown at Leung at an event in 2013. You'll see the IKEA wolf being variously tortured throughout the protest sites.

Guan Yu: A Chinese military figure deified around 600 AD Guan Yu is worshiped and revered as a symbol of strength and bravery. Many Hong Kong students describe him as a superhero figure present in popular culture as the hero of (now fictoinalized) films and video games. His popularity means he is worshiped by protesters, police and triads alike, making him a fitting (if confusing) figure to build a shrine to at the protest barricades in Mong Kok. How are the purported Triad thugs/pro-Beiging counter-protesters to proceed when they find their path blocked by the very god they worship? Do they tear the shrine down in order to attack the student protesters? What about the police, whose side are they on when Guan Yu is placed in the middle (it's worth noting that most police stations feature their own Guan Yu shrines)? It's a stroke of genius that shows just one of the playful ways protesters are exploring their own culture.

As a non-Cantonese speaker attending the protests, I have to ask people around me to translate things all the time because the majority of materials, events and even the main protest song, 'Under a Vast Sky' by 1990s canto-rock band Beyond are all in Cantonese. But this adds an element of interactivity. You have to ask and take part in order to understand what is going on and that connects you to the protests in a powerful way.

Mary Louise: How important is the material culture of the movement on the ground? What are you seeing in terms of art and how is it being used to connect the protesters? What are some of its other uses?

Charlotte: The protest is its ingenious material culture.

Imagine the Admiralty protest site. It takes over the 4 lanes of what would usually be a city centre over-pass gridlocked with taxis, buses and cars. Now it is a micro-community who have managed to install everything they need from food and drink to beds, showers, recycling units, composting and electronic device charging stations. When you arrive on site you will need to climb barriers to get into the now occupied road. No problem, at intervals all along the road barriers are ladders manned by two people - one will take your bags the other will hold your hand and help you over. Are you a bit lost or do you want more information on the protests? Why not join a tour group? Do you need your tour in a different language or are you sight or hearing impaired? Trust me, the right tour group exists for you and it'll seek you out. Of course it's very hot here so people will give you bottled water and a cool strip for the back of your neck on arrival and they'll also try to feed you with greater persistence than an elderly relative. Hopefully all of that sets the scene because once you've got over the fact you've entered into this robust but make-shift community the next thing you'll notice is the art — it's everywhere!

Conscious of long-term impact (did I mention the amount of recycling and tidying up that goes on at each protest site?), everything installed at each protest site can be uninstalled — not one piece of art could be considered permanent (or a form of criminal damage). That's not to say protesters don't want their work to endure — there's a compulsion to cover everything in clingfilm (Saran wrap?) to protect it from rain — but it is largely site-specific and ephemeral art made by and for a temporary community. For example:

The Lennon Wall:At the start of the protests there was a long staircase coming down from a bridge over one of the roads that had been sprinkled with colored Post-Its. Each one a neat and contained answer to the provocation 'why are we here'. Each response, asking for a better more democratic future for Hong Kong is individual and heartfelt. As the days have gone on, this paper mosaic has grown to several times its original size — and due to its proximity to the Imagine banner, it's now known as the Lennon wall. In many other locations these message or 'democracy walls' fill with still more notes often tied on with the ubiquitous yellow ribbons, or maybe folded into origami umbrellas…

The Tree of Democracy: Students from the School of Creative Media at the City University of Hong Kong created a tree of umbrellas after the violent tear gas and pepper spray attacks on student protesters. The people of Hong Kong are still coming to terms with the severity of the police actions on Sunday 28th September. These are peaceful protests that deploy all manner of tactics to calm aggression (the latest move involves singing Happy Birthday to pro-Beijing counter-protesters) and as I've said the protester hospitality it world class. The Tree of Democracy sits on a roundabout facing government buildings on one side and the harbor on the other. It was one of the first artworks to take the #umbrellarevolution hashtag by storm and remains a site of pilgrimage for protesters and onlookers at the Admiralty site.

The Umbrella Man: One of the most recent large-scale additions riffs off the images that went viral after the violent police reactions on September 28th. Images of a male protester holding aloft the umbrellas used by students to protect themselves from pepper spray and tear gas were seen the world over the umbrella instantly became the symbol of Hong Kong's democracy protests. The 12ft tall wooden-block sculpture of a man holding an umbrella was made by someone using the pseudonym 'Milk' and dubbed 'umbrella man' by the protester community. The spectre of Tiananmen Square looms over these student actions and though it wasn't intentional, many have compared Umbrella Man to the Goddess of Democracy sculpture created by protesters in Tiananmen in 1989.

Mary Louise: How about the digital culture? What have you found there that rises to the level of art practice? Walk me through what you are seeing.

Charlotte: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Whatsapp and newcomer Fire Chat (an app that facilitates public, networked conversations without the need for an internet connection) all support an epic amount of documentation. On Facebook people rushed to change their profile pictures either to the yellow ribbon motif or before that, as the student protests began, people swapped contemporary images of themselves with ones of when they were at school/university as a way of representing the concept of an interrupted future. And I cannot emphasize enough how much this is a city of people glued to their smart phones - so much so that when you take the MRT (Subway) your ears will ring with the warning 'hold the handrail don't look only at your mobile phone' while the selfie-stick is ever present. Hong Kongers self-archive with fervor and now they've turned that compulsion towards what is happening politically — everywhere we're capturing what we're seeing, sharing it and keeping up-to-date with news via this flood of images and the information network they visualize. One of the best live aggregations of this stream of information supplied largely by social media is conducted on Reddit.

There has also been Kacey Wong's mock competition which called for artists to create and share logos for the Umbrella Revolution. Many of these can be found on Kacey's Facebook page. And then there's the 'Stand By You: 'Add Oil' Machine' (The term 'add oil' or 'add fuel' comes from a local term of encouragement). This project was created by a group of artists associated with the protests — Chris Cheung, Jason Lam and, Sampson Wong, Jason Lam — and provides a website where people from around the world can send messages of support and solidarity direct to the protests sites here in Hong Kong. For example there is a massive projection of these messages at the Admiralty protest site just along from the Lennon Wall.

Mary Louise: As a critic, art historian and a teacher of students of criticism, what are you looking at and how are you guiding your students to interpret and share what they are seeing, if anything? What are some of the questions you are asking?

Charlotte: Many of my colleagues have been involved in teach-ins where they offered workshops and talks at protests sites. Others have taken their students to the protest sites and set specific tasks. It is difficult to find a balance because we are an international city and many of our students are not from Hong Kong and they might of course be from Mainland China. As a result we've all tried to find the right mix of throwing our support behind the protests and not alienating anyone. I have allowed my students to protest as much as they like and in at least one of their upcoming assessments they will be allowed to focus on the aesthetics of occupy. I want to make sure they get the opportunity to reflect upon what is happening and I'm keen on making sure we are all doing as much as we can to archive and contextualize this awe-inspiring period of Hong Kong's political and cultural history.

Something I'd add. It is impossible to convey how kind these protests are. Yes there has been violence from the police and anti-protesters, but the Umbrella Revolution protesters themselves have created something quite magical. Even us non-Cantonese speakers feel involved and welcomed. While a lot of the artworks and activities happening across the protests sites are quite whimsical. I think you can get that sense from the examples I've given but the recent tactic of singing Happy Birthday to counter-protesters might be the best case in point.

These protests exude personality of Hong Kongers: hardworking, generous, playful.