Titled “Motives for. Remembering,” the 2nd of the three book launch events for Our Manifestos 2: Videography, Documentary Impulses took place on-line last night with our artists participating from the Los Angeles, London, HK and Shanghai in the form of a webinar. Zach McLane and Linda Lai had a follow-up email conversation in which Zach points out issues for further address — now published as a postscript to the webinar… 「錄像宣言2」新書發佈會2 — 網絡研討會『為何要記住』昨晚在據點舉行，受邀參與這計劃的藝術家來自美英中港。會後 LA 的年青創作人 Zach McLane 與黎肖嫻進行了電郵的小小跟進討論，點出了未來有待深化的議題。
***Feature image: gif from Zach McLane’s Tearing, screened at Floating Projects 2018.
POSTSCRIPTS to the 28 May Webinar 5月28日網路研討會後記
Zach to Linda | 8:32am (HKT) 29 May 2021
… Great to see you today and continue to share the dialogue about video making, remembering, and the process of growing. I so appreciate you saying that the point of writing a manifesto is to look back at it and notice the way it no longer represents who we are. I really thought when I was writing two years ago that I was coming up with a “final text” or something… I was actually quite sure of myself – That attitude feels very naive now. There is so much still to come to know.
One thing that I have been thinking about recently that I didn’t get a chance to touch on in the event this morning was the way that remembering and documenting relate to the future, not just the past. I feel that to document for the purpose of remembering is to create the possibility of a future or an afterward. My documentation isn’t just about preserving or interrogating the present, but also about projecting the possibility into the future that someone or something will be there to look at what I’ve done. Just some quick thoughts I wish I could have gotten in today. … …
Linda to Zach | 11:04am (HKT) 29 May 2021
I totally agree with what you said about writing a manifesto not just to look back but for the future, which I also hinted when I probed the question of whether we worry about our manifesto becoming obsolete.
Your comments are fresh and pertinent to our on-going conversation.
One point I wish to have advanced but didn’t was that video is part of a network of things. One may focus on the material and philosophical interiority of videography, and yet tentacular thinking (Donna J. Haraway) puts us onto an interdisciplinary orientation by default. So, in thinking through the object of video, we are at once engaging in videography as an event (that generates potentials) and establishing a relationship with other domains of human existence. … Somehow, I lost my tracks of thoughts (last night) …
