Ashlyn Chak

Opinion | At Clockenflap 2024 Hong Kong festival, music but also misogyny, misbehaviour, misnaming

Festivalgoers and performers took to social media with allegations of sexual harassment and bad behaviour, and noted a heavy police presence

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DJ Sim0ne (above) performs at Clockenflap 2024. She later complained on social media about the behaviour of a group of teenage boys at the front of the crowd. There were other complaints about crowd behaviour too. Photo: Instagram/@sim0ne

Ashlyn Chak

Published: 5:45pm, 4 Dec 2024

From misogynistic young men and misbehaving teenagers to a heavy police presence and overseas performers mixing up Hong Kong with other East Asian cultures, Clockenflap 2024 caused quite a stir over the weekend, and not in a good way.

“Embarrassment” is the first word that comes to mind for this writer, who has nothing but conflicted love for the city.

Sure, it is not the first time people have complained about the antics of the crowd, but what took place during the city’s annual flagship music festival may have, I fear, cast Hong Kong – and some of the visiting musicians – in a bad light.

First came the emotional video – split into six Instagram stories – from Scottish hard house DJ Sim0ne, who said a group of seven or eight teenage boys made “really obscene hand gestures” at her during her set on Saturday evening.

Scottish model turned musician Simone Murphy, better known as Sim0ne, complained of sexual harassment by some members of the audience during her performance at Clockenflap. Photo: SCMPost

DJ Sim0ne was disturbed by the behaviour of a group of teenage boys at the front of her Clockenflap set on Saturday, November 30. Photo: Instagram/@sim0ne

The electronic musician and former model said the group were also holding up “super sexually explicit” messages on their phone screens and waving them at her, “which was not only distracting but was sexual harassment. And they were doing this [less than a metre from] the bouncers who [just ignored them and] did nothing.”