index of /何穎雅 elaine w.ho
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母錄 parent directory | ||||
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什麼是一種「記錄姿態的行為」? documentary gestures | 24-Sep-2022 | 21# | ||
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「商業的結構」是什麼? the architectures of commerce | 21-Dec-2024 | 14# | ||
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什麼是一個「開放平台」? what is an open platform? | 03-Sep-2017 | 15# | ||
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詞語 words | ||||
 iwishicoulddescribeittoyoubetter |
21-Dec-2024 | - | TOWARD A THEORY OF THE DESIGNWORK That the experience of designworks is adequate only as living experience is more than a statement about the relation of the user to the object, more than a statement about the active subconscious as a condition of aesthetic perception. Beginning with a simple transference from the introductory statement by Adorno in his text “Toward a Theory of the Artwork”, it is possible to find a critical point of reference for design and its relationships to everyday life.[1] The analogy is a simple and direct one in light of his writings on the culture industry; if an artwork is indeed a commodity “that has rejected every semblance of existing for society”, Adorno points to us the otherwise known standard whereby commodities “urgently cling” to the service of man.[2] And why shouldn’t we embrace this urgency, extend it, find ourselves in relation to and be accountable for the objects of our own creation and manufacture? While the moment of transaction seems to supercede the general discussion of commodity in a market society, perhaps we can and should begin to look further, in the grey unbounds of use and experience, to find other grounds by which to perceive and engage the objects around us. By addressing the designwork as commodity, we can begin to analyse it with respect to what Marx referred to as its use-value and exchange-value, whereby the former quantifies an object’s utility and the latter its tradability.[3] This system proposes utilitarian worth independent from the value for which an object can be traded. Design theory makes use of an analogous dichotomy whereby utility is analysed in terms of function, balanced with the physical form or body of the product.  [4]Design critic Prasad Boradkar’s table makes important note, however, that different understandings of utility occupy Marx’s commodity discourse than in the modernist design sense. The classic form versus function dialectic in design ties corporeality to form, function being the abstract carrier of the design process. Marx, however, identifies use-value with the objecthood of a commodity, tied to its physical form, and exchange-value represents the more ephemeral classification. In both cases, we can look at the commodity with respect to its materiality, “at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.”[5] The separation between a thing and its environment cannot be absolutely definite and clear-cut; there is a passage by insensible gradations from the one to the other: the close solidarity which binds all the objects of the material universe, the perpetuality of their reciprocal actions and reactions, is sufficient to prove that they have not the precise limits which we attribute to them. Our perception outlines, so to speak, the form of their nucleus; it terminates them at the point where our possible action upon them ceases, where, consequently, they cease to interest our needs. Such is the primary and the most apparent operation of the perceiving mind: it marks out divisions in the continuity of the extended, simply following the suggestions of our requirements and the needs of practical life.[6]Bergson’s text takes the designwork further into its “metaphysical subtleties” here, and the dialectic between the universal and the particular emerges as a temporal gradient. Adorno traces the path from theory to praxis along this stream, and in the designwork we can add the variable of use into the analysis. Use in this sense is not to be confused with praxis, the latter of which represents a finite point, the fixation of objecthood as the end of a process. Use marks a further phase on the way of becoming, where experience molds “completeness” towards the user’s ends. The commodification of a design object represents a standstill image, but that image should not be forgotten as a metaphor for process, the active subconsciousness with which we can shift in focus from the objects of consumption to the tactics, ruses, appropriations and what Michel deCerteau calls les combinatoires d’opérations (systems of operational combination) which emerge around them. Adorno relates this summation to the monad: “at once a force field and a thing”.[7] In this case, the force field possesses the space between the object and user, predicated on use, time and the “minimal self-obtuse impulses” that neverthless have the ability to reach deep into culture and consciousness.[8] The principle of particularization to the universal exists nowhere more clearly than in the designwork, who in its multiplicity makes a proposition for an ideal universal, not necessarily a world completely other than it is but one that is improved, more efficient or more beautiful. The designer, in striving for this ideal, refines his or her attention, skill and expression to the finest detail, the result of which, in production and consumption, returns to the generic, the masses and the ordinary. Even in the case of the exceptional or fantastic, design in the aesthetic sense is like the artwork, “an example of its genre: It is spuriously individual.”[9] Mass production is one example, but for every designwork, the user also generates a mutable relationship to the design work, at once on the scales of the minute and the generic. A car is driven on a daily commute. A new shirt is incorporated into someone’s wardrobe and becomes an old favourite; the universal finds its way back to the particular. Would Adorno still consider the designwork as polemical? The artwork separates itself from the empirical world, but on the basis of utility, design begs for living experience beyond that of art and the gaze that animates it. Even in the case of innovation or revolutionary progress (e.g., technology), the inherent desire of the designwork is to immerse itself into an everyday fabric, to disappear not by instantaneous immolation but with the longevity of being routine, well-worn, and tried (the exception of course being those wasteful products of society-by-convenience, the disposable and the faddish [10]). The designwork makes no appearance of truth but a practice of it. This is the “active subconscious” to which it submits, such that use becomes habit, custom, wont—the subtle layers of comfort that pervade all of human activity. Adorno positions the fundamental quality of artworks in an ever precarious flux, an inherently irresolvable aporia between self and the self-identical, human creation and the sublime. But where this dialectic seeks the self-identical in an ascendancy of the sublime, the designwork is art’s underachieving half-sister, only able to take itself seriously as much as it regards itself as a mortal product limited to a lifespan of nowness, identity determined by its utility and un vouloir-faire, a will to do. deCerteau writes: “Henceforth identity depends on the production, on the endless moving on (or detachment and cutting loose) that this loss makes necessary. Being is measured by doing”.[11] Where Kant considers art as servant of the sublime, design is relegated to humankind, no less tragic. Its own process of becoming may appear to find resolution, inasmuch as routine and practice provide the semblance of a harmonious rhythm, but this relation between object and user is as fragile as the dialogue between artwork and viewer. Technology and capitalist economics’ reliance on measures of progress put the designwork ever on the brink of extinction more obviously than the artwork. Both, however are teleologically bound to serve continuity, being capable of it “by virtue of their incompleteness and, often, by their insignificance”. [12] Until now, we have already assumed the idea of artworks and designworks as commodity, animate and amoral. Culture as industry is unavoidable and numbing. In this case, designers may be accused of being the most vicious culprits, indoctrinators to the masses of the visual and tactile language pushing particular homogenizing tendencies in behaviour—how “properly” to interact with objects, software and other people. Adorno warns against the marketing of ideologies; today’s lifestyle brands manufacture exactly that. Suddenly, the rhythm and comfort of use-patterns and the active subconscious seems too controlled and horrifying. The question of how to escape a pervasive and regimented cultural system returns. Not to mention the will to do, how do we make do? That is the subject of deCerteau’s cultural anthropology and The Practice of Everyday Life, recourse to a totalising cultural sphere of production. Here, deCerteau calls upon the possibilities for reappropriating, subverting and reinventing, and it is in our daily lives and with the designwork that we have the greatest possibilities to do so. Whereas the artwork maintains an inherent foreignness, the designwork is seductive and seeks to befriend. It encourages interaction and bears the ability to give itself up to the user in a manner that the artwork, as servant of the sublime, cannot. Thus so, users and target markets, although perhaps despicable in their manipulation and oversimplification, must also be regarded as communities with the ability, and responsiblity, to interpret, comment upon and critique the works that are presented to them. The nucleus of truth in the designwork emerges as a multifaceted, postmodern buffet subject to even greater implosion from the external as is exploded from the initial concept. The designwork is shaped by doing, at its core a means and a process. The viewer’s gaze upon an artwork, while discursive, still lies outside of the inherent conflict within the artwork itself. Starry Night will always be van Gogh’s; The Godfather will always be Coppola’s. But Herzog & deMeuron’s grandiose schemes for the Olympic stadium in Beijing will take on the metaphorical meanings of its use, to be identified and coloured by the degree of success to which it proves capable. Even the designer t-shirt becomes its owner’s, part of an overall wardrobe or look. The presence of logos and overt elements of design brings in a tangent discussion that cannot be fully developed here, but it does still reference the user’s consolidation as part of a community, style, or particular ideology. Through use- value and the shifting balances that occur in the lifehood of the object, exchange-value becomes an opportunity cost of emotional investment. Herein we find another kind of dialectic for design, whereby the designwork debases itself humbly, relinquishing identity to that of the user and hoping, at least, for a graceful death. -- [1] Adorno, Theodor W. Aesthetic Theory. Trans. by Robert Hullot-Kentor. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. p. 175. ^ [2] Adorno, 236. ^ [3] Boradkar, Prasad. "A Very Strange Thing: Commodity Discourse in Cultural Theory and Design". Arizona: Arizona State University. p. 2. ^ [4] ibid. ^ [5] Marx, Karl. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1. New York: International Publishers Co., Inc., 1967. p. 163. ^ [6] Bergson, Henri. Matter and Memory. New York: Zone Books, 2002. pp. 209-210.^ [7] Adorno, 179. ^ [8] Adorno, 178. ^ [9] Adorno, 181. ^ [10] In the case of "fast food" products, those created specifically for short lifespans, single-use or disposability, disappearance is literally part of the design, not in term of longevity but ever greatly facilitated by their characterization of being generic, populist and mainstream. ^ [11] deCerteau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. p. 137. ^ [12] Adorno, 176. ^ |
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 PARASITE, (or polygamy) |
Jul-2018 | ed of 8 | |||
| 『目錄 CATALOGUE』number two |
Sep-2017 | ed of 500 | |||
| 穿 Wear journal number three
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Sep-2012 | ed of 800 | |||
| rePLACE |
Aug-2011 | ed of 300 | |||
| 穿 Wear journal number two |
May-2010 | ed of 500 | |||
| 穿 Wear journal number one |
Dec-2008 | ed of 1000 | |||
| iwishicoulddescribeittoyoubetter number two |
Jun-2006 | ed of 100 | |||
| Wear [iwishicoulddescribeittoyoubetter number one] |
26-May-2006 | ed of 300 | |||
| seks |
Apr-2003 | ed of 300 | |||
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"Leave Your Notebooks, But You Can't Leave the Factory" Radio Kosaten journal #01 |
Fall-2017 | 2hr47m conversation | ||
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"Post on the Post-Salon" 上午艺术空间 am Art Space, reprinted Jul-2018 in issue 331 of 《艺术世界 Art World》 |
2017-06-30 | 1,344 words |
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"Buku Jalanan's Politics of the Street: Zikri RAHMAN in conversation with Elaine W. Ho" "Questions out of the Demonstration Area: LEE Chun Fung in conversation with Elaine W. Ho" "Adding Letters to our TransActions: YEOH Lianheng in conversation with Elaine W. Ho" Art in Context / Learning from the Field: Conversations with and between art and cultural practitioners edited by Herman Bashiron MENDOLICCHIO and Susanne BOSCH |
2017 | 12,228 words |
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"Two Footnotes on Language and Power" Ausreißer: Die Grazer Wandzeitung, #70 |
Jul-2016 | 966 words |
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"什么是‘好机构’？ What is a 'good institution'?" 《箭厂空间四年书》Arrow Factory: The Next Four Years |
Dec-2015 | 2,219 words |
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"如果记忆和巧合的事实本身并不重要，那么，什么才是重要的? If it is not the fact of the memory nor coincidence that matter per se, then what is it?" Per Se, artist edition by Nina SCHUIKI |
22-Oct-2015 | 1,249 words |
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"Communities, Narration and (In)dependence" Politics and Aesthetics of Creativity: City, Culture and Space in East Asia edited by Pan LV, Dixon WONG Heung-Wah, Karin CHAU |
Oct-2015 | 10,213 words |
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"心瓣运动请继续：谈一场集体的恋爱 On the Ongoing Labours of Love: HomeShop Opens and Closes, Opens and Closes" 《艺术世界》Art World co-written with 张小船 Boat ZHANG |
Apr-2015 | 2,588 words |
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"Between 缘分 Yuanfen, Real Estate, and Serendipity" 家作坊 HomeShop interviewed by Binna CHOI & Maiko TANAKA Grand Domestic Revolution Handbook edited by Binna CHOI & Maiko TANAKA |
Sep-2014 | 4,955 words |
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"Who Goes, Where Are? [part 4]: Documentation as gesture in alternative art practices of contemporary China" co-written with Edward SANDERSON ArtReview:Asia |
A/W-2014 | 2,266 words |
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"The Losers of Chinese Contemporary Art" San Francisco Art Quarterly |
Aug-2014 | 1,572 words |
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"組織｜大眾 Organisation-At-Large" 《假如（在一起）Can We Live (Together)》catalogue text |
19-Oct-2014 | 2,017 words |
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"Hong Kong Currents" co-written with Fotini LAZARIDOU-HATZIGOGA Wanda |
25-Apr-2014 | 2,149 words |
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"Neighbourhood" Cluster Dialectionary: Terminology of the Future edited by Binna CHOI, Maria LIND, Emily PETHICK & Nataša PETREŠIN-BACHELEZ |
Jul-2014 | 948 words |
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"附录的附录" "Attachments to the Appendix" 《附录》Appendix edited by Michael EDDY & Fotini LAZARIDOU-HATZIGOGA |
22-Dec-2013 | 1,526 words |
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"回顧聲音圖書館" Editorial: The Library by soundpocket |
18-Dec-2013 | 1,465 words |
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"致X作者的一則公報" "Accomunique to Author X" 《逆棲：都市邊緣中的對話與重建》 Reverse Niche: Dialogue and Rebuilding at the City's Edge, edited by 柯念璞 Alice KO 画册 catalogue, Hong-Gah Museum, Taipei TW |
Sep-2013 | 2,480 words |
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"Keeping it Real: Art, Activism and the 'East Asia Multitude'" Institution for the Future edited by Biljana CIRIC & Sally LAI Chinese Art Centre, Manchester UK |
Sep-2012 | 3,529 words |
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"好久不见！我们快走！" Croquis issue 4: 未知物世界 For The Unknowns |
Mar-2012 | 4kb | ||
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"致编辑的「黄边日报」信件" "The YellowSide Daily Letters to the Editor" co-written with HomeShop 「一个（非）美术馆：回想、再现、共鸣」 A Museum That is Not: Reflection, Representation, Resonance 画册 catalogue, Guangdong Times Museum, Guangdong CN |
Feb-2012 | 5,633 words |
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"The Klashinkof and the Longbeard" proposal for 《艺术世界》Art World magazine |
08-Sep-2011 | 172kb | ||
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"17 Days in Beijing: Screen of Consciousness on the Micropolitical" co-written with Sean SMITH Public, No. 40 |
Jun-2010 | 3,863 words |
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“大爷，老张，高哥与大胡子在大市内的小村庄" "Grandpa, Old Zhang, Brother Gao and Big Beard in the small village in the city" 《城市画报》 City Pictorial, No. 22 |
28-Nov-2009 | 1.8mb | ||
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"Unlayering the Relational: Microaesthetics and Micropolitics" co-presented with Sean SMITH MediaModes conference, School of Visual Arts, New York |
14-Nov-2009 | 152mb | ||
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"Emancipating 'Fashion': Notes on Dress and Politics" |
11-Jul-2009 | 41kb | ||
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“家作坊系列一号：08奥运会结束了" "HomeShop Series number one: GAMES 2008 off the Map" 《城市中国》 Urban China, Issue 33 |
Dec-2008 | 4.5mb | ||
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"Before and During and After" |
17-Jun-2008 | 41kb | ||
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"Toward a Theory of the Designwork" |
19-Feb-2007 | 66kb | ||
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"Cast a Thought" TimeOut Beijing, Issue 10 |
Jul-2005 | 911 words |
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"On the Practice of Everyday Life" |
28-Feb-2005 | 33kb | ||
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別處 elsewhere | 21-Dec-2024 | 64# | ||
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in other words [about 關於⋯⋯] | 2022 | 05# | ||
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聯繫 contact | - | 01# | ||
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