The work borrows its title from comments made on social media in the initial frenzy of protests against extraditions in Hong Kong in 2019, and which originally makes a direct reference to the work of the black civil rights activist Gil Scott-Heron and his poem “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” written in 1970. The artist mixes images of clashes between protesters and the police in Hong Kong, often against a backdrop of vast air-conditioned shopping malls, interspersed with archival footage of the Crystal Palace, built for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London; of 19th century prototype terrariums used in the botanical trade of the British Empire; and 20th century corporate sales training videos from. The video reflects not only on how shopping centers, as a spatial form, evolved from their colonial roots of conquest to a machine of consumerism and social control, but also on how their architectural design can be subverted, converting isolated and sterilized spaces into a field of political action and dissent.
