未竟计划代理社:香港分部

AGENCY FOR UNREALIZED PROJECTS:HONG KONG DIVISION

你过去的未来计划是什么？当我受邀完成这篇香港艺术家作品集时,我的第一个想法就是不能只是把＂已完成＂的作品从原来的上下文中抽离出来放到在一起,这样只会暴露读者无法亲自感受原作的缺憾。因此我开始在脑中形成一个关于＂未完成＂或者＂进行中＂作品的模糊想法,我想让那些已经存在但尚未公诸于世的作品浮出水面。为了让主题更明确,我决定借用＂未实现的项目＂这一概念。采访中经常听到有人问：＂你未来的计划是什么？＂现在我们把这个问题调过头,对准过去。

My first resolution in compiling this anthology of works by Hong Kong artists was to avoid a presentation of"completed"works,plucked out of context only to draw out the shortcomings of not being able to experience them in person. Indeed,it seemed more compelling to showcase"incomplete works"or"works in progress,thus allowing for an existing body of unseen creations to come to the surface.I ultimately decided to focus the selection around a tongue-in-cheek nod to the common interview question:"What are your future plans?"Turned on its head,the question becomes:"What were your future plans?"The"unrealized project"is of course well-trodden territory,as evidenced by the detailed research of Unbuilt Roads:107 Unrealized Projects(1997) edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Guy Tortosa,and with a slightly different emphasis, Rejected Collection:Rejected Proposals by Chinese Contemporary Artists (2007) edited by Biljana Ciric.Despite some initial hesitations,I decided to push ahead with the theme.Since neither of these publications have covered work from artists in Hong Kong,it seemed all the more appropriate to expand the list.But more importantly,given the region’s complex status vis-a-vis China and the rest of the world,it became interesting to see how an intimate cross-section of the ideas,uncertainties,constraints,possibilities and impossibilities of being an artist here might shed an informed yet alternative light on the subject of the city’s social and cultural evolution. The selection of artists that follows is inherently partial.I have made a point of including artists who live and work in Hong Kong but who might not be considered"local"on the basis of ethnicity.The works bear no necessary connection to the region;it seems sufficient enough to be an artist that is,or has been based in Hong Kong to convey a sense of the place and its attendant complexities and issues.