TODAY'S ARCHIVE IS (NOT) TOMORROW'S HISTORY by Serene Hui

Credits 致謝 Concept & Text 概念及文本

Design 設計

Translation & Proofreading 翻譯及校對

With Support From Print run 50 This chapbook is printed as a compilation of weekly worklogs during the research phase at Para Site Studio & Archival Project. / Nov 2021 本小冊子是作為Para Site Studio & Archival Project 駐留時 期研究階段的每週工作日誌的彙編 而印刷。/ 2021 11月 Keep in touch for further developments of the project in 2022! 請保持聯繫，了解2022年項目的進 一步發展！ szelokserene.com clokserene@gmail.com @clokserene @parasite.hk

...as well as, the presumed conception of the functionality of an archive, in this case especially in the arts realm, its respective relationship with the institution, the visitors, and the artist; many other unwritten layers of art production and its constitutions...

Departing from Para Site’s invitation to engage directly with the art space’s archive, instead reflecting on the growing sense of alienation felt upon the invitation (as an semi-local artist being introduced to the systematized timeline of the oldest institution of contemporary art in Hong Kong for the first time)...

What still fascinates us is that photography is reality (Susan Sontag) -

Timelessness of exhibition making and the role of arts to society

We look at the images and can't really grasp what we see, what they say has existed.

My interest in classification systems, problem of formalisation, representation and organisation of knowledge got deflected with another form that classifies not concepts and works of words but the affective, the untraceable and the imaginative.

I wonder...how much has our society changed through the past 2 decades (given that the archival material in Para Site started only in 1996)?

I'm unconsciously drawn to the many similarities between the past and ‘present times’ - the very similar questions that artists and curators have been asking through their works as a critical reflection on the societal and political situation. Surprisingly many of these questions seem to be ever more relevant to the ‘now’.

Work Log Entry #3

*’Spectral Infrastructure’ (2020-ongoing) is a long-term research trajectory convened by BAK, Utrecht and freethought collective. The term alludes to “hidden and invisible textures that sustain an undefinable and disruptive quality in an otherwise efficient seeming organism.” Spectral infrastructures by nature elude stable definitions but act as fleeting re-compositions and hauntings of dominant historical narratives and structures.

This week’s WIP is an introspective one and is dedicated to a genuine distraction by the two tropical cyclones Lionrock and Kompasu which shattered my mentality and my words. Here are some notes on the fragments that occupied my mind in relation to this residency this week.

11 - 17 Oct, 2021

Several projection slides that documented (vaguely) exhibition views, (partial) artworks and special (or incidental) moments ranging from 1996 to 2003. The assortment was my preliminary attempt to compose an abstract narrative having in mind the notion of ‘spectral infrastructure’*. In the coming days I am planning to put together an experimental photo-essay with these slides...

‘Spectral’ is going to be a key term that will constitute a large part of the development of my research about the invisible, the silence, the ghostly, the ambivalence…

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Xavier Le Roy, Product of Circumstances in Taiping Tianguo, A History of Possible Encounters: Ai Weiwei, Frog King Kwok, Tehching Hsieh, and Martin Wong in New York, 1999 ; Ւ⴩童⴨⬈Փ糛 ㉹糚

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Is this pure coincidence or a serendipity - that ParaSite relocated from its former location in Sheung Wan Po Yan Street where there are several traditional papier-mâché offering shops around the area*, to its current location in Quarry Bay King’s Road right next to the Hong Kong Funeral Home. 這純粹是巧合還是機緣巧合——ParaSite 從上環 寶仁街的舊址搬遷至目前位於鰂魚涌英皇道旁邊 的位置，以前那裡有幾家傳統紙紮店，現在旁邊 正是香港殯儀館。

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