[ re-posted with revisions from 2015.07.21] Assemblage at Floating Projects started with two personal stories. Initiation of the Assemblage events are documented here in writing, on 14 July 2015, on the eve of FP1.0’s Grand Opening…
**first published 21 July 2015; revised and updated in May 2022. FP Assemblage will be played at Asia Art Archive's newly refurbished library on 3-4 February 2023 with special site-specific protocol.
2015.07.15 - 2015 .08.01 ＠ Floating Projects 據點・句點
“WCH Assemblage #1" (Wong Chuk Hang Assemblage) epitomizes a few basic principles of the Floating Projects (FP) – note its Chinese name literally means “occupying point, completion point.”
The first is a kind of Wong-Chuk-Hang-ness (WCH-ness). The Floating Projects Collective, primarily a point where people gathered in its former Queen’s Road East location, then stretched into a space-bound project at 8D, no. 40, Wong Chuk Hang Road, where thinking space and production of space were priority. The industrial nature of WCH was an immediate inspiration as we moved in the last week of May 2015. In a month’s time, we furnished FP with found, discarded material from the WCH industrial area, and collected idol tools and furniture from the FP members. Reactivating disused objects to give them a next life has become a cherished FP principle since then. To explore and activate the potentiality of physical material – wood, frames, paper, loose parts of machines and so on – we have upheld “automatism” as a method. This means we may collect whatever material comes into our possession, we gather them in the space of our artistic production area, think on the spot, and assemble loose material into objects halfway between abstraction and figuration, expression and representation, and even if they are unnameable.
“WCH Assemblage #1” made the above principle work. As a visitor arrived, in front of her lied the result of our first automatism exercise: no waste, push one step forward. WCH Assemblage #1 was inspired by Michael Beutler’s Moby Dick exhibition […] which I visited at Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin in summer 2015.
“WCH Assemblage” would grow into #2, #3 and more episodes as participants continued to come with productive inserts into FP’s space, and happenings of all kinds emerged. We welcome anyone to stop by to make her own work.
Our third principle is “reconfiguration.” We envision the site to be like an amoeba – same material, many forms, many shapes, and with internal transformation.
p.s.: My father spent his last 20 years before he passed away in 2013 working in a print shop in Wong Chuk Hang. During that entire period, I had not for once visited him at his work place. Now that he has departed, I am taking immense interest in understanding this unfamiliar place with a sense of intimacy.
Linda Lai (Project Experimenter) / 14 July 2015
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I grew up in the south-western district of Hong Kong Island. My father had been working in the Wong Chuk Hang (WCH) area since I was born. He was an envelope-making master. When I was small, I used to take my afternoon nap inside a big cage filled with mountains of chopped paper. I also had my first contact with a screwdriver while hanging out in the envelope factory, slowly striking out paper from the marked cut-out area to make windows for the envelopes with my little hands. Two years ago, I moved my personal studio to Wong Chuk Hang. Now my father is still working in the Wong Chuk Hang area, but the cartilage between his left palm and his forearm has been “exhausted.” He is now working as a security guard in the same building as my studio. But I rarely see him in the security guard position when I pass by the entrance of the factory building.
I have the feeling that I have been spending most of my lifetime to prepare for this WCH Assemblage #1, with an unexpected spark triggering in May 2015 – the start-up of the Floating Projects. As Linda Lai said, WCH-ness is critical in this assemblage. The diverse material I collected with WCH-ness is far more than just those physical objects appearing in the art production site. WCH-ness to me is also…
– the routes I followed while moving logistics to FP and the time spent on it…
– cooperation with my only colleague in WCH…
– anticipation, accidents and imagination when checking out refuse collection points…
– overturning my trolley while struggling to move through the busy roads in Wong Chuk Hang…
– friendly greetings from the uncle security guards, auntie cleaners and waitresses in dai pai dong (street-hawkers for prepared food)…
– machine sounds made by the impatient truck drivers…
– the dust I’d sucked in while waiting for useful materials to appear in the renovation site…
– the anxiety of going to my studio, my landlord’s coffee bean storage, to try different coffee beans for FP when the rent for my studio was still outstanding at the beginning of a month…
– general sentiments of conducting my daily routine in this area as well as the familiar sense of my body inhabiting and moving through the space of WCH…
– sheer fortuity that my name’s initials are also WCH…
WONG Chun-hoi (Artistic Engineer) / 2015.07.21
概念、形體、過程。裝置藝術的基本文法。
也不知道是否裝置藝術。裝置卻是肯定的。黃竹坑是重點。2015年5月第四個星期起，「句點」變了「據點。句點」，出現在港島西南的黃竹坑道40號8D。8D，讓「句點」群體張開成為盤踞空間、策略空間的「據點。句點」。
黃竹坑是重點。一個月以來，在區內拾遺，被棄置的木頭鋼架桌面椅子半合攏的半家私給扛到8D，漸漸填滿了70% 的藝術工場，又一層一層的給組織、組合，分門別類、割離。都是即場的靈犀一點、不假思索，卻又冷靜推斷著現成/被棄物的物理性，可衍生的下一步。
從數件作品中，你可以窺見的不單是黃竹坑工業區一帶我們拾到的現成物，也有自不同工作室搬運物資到「據點。句點」用過的材料，或意外尋回的個人舊作。
也不知道是否裝置藝術。裝置卻是肯定的。工場眼前所見，是對現成物料帶鍾愛的敬禮。這個也許就是「據點。句點」作為身處黃竹坑的藝術工場的基調。《黃竹坑聚疊（一）》的靈感來自於我今年夏天在柏林 Hamburger Bahnhof 參觀的 Michael Beutler 的 <Moby Dick> 臨場裝置。《黃竹坑聚疊（一）》是往後的空間「變形蟲」地誌的序幕，等待著「據點。句點」眾人的承接，「發明」不同的具有群體和個人特色的各種「聚」和「疊」。等待著驚訝、未所預期的、出人意表的...。
希望你也來玩變法遊戲。
黎肖嫻 ／ 計劃實驗人 （2015年7月14日）
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家住南區，家父早年一直於黃竹坑工作，把一張張紙摺疊印窗再成為信封、文件袋、利是封。我年少就在工廠收集紙碎堆的大籠子裡睡午覺；那時候，我第一 次拿起螺絲批，在信封原紙上「吸窗」的位置，每十張十張的把那切邊位的紙挑出來。今天，家父仍在黃竹坑工作，可是左手前臂跟手掌關節的軟骨已經磨蝕，已改行當大廈保安。每次我從工作室位處的工廠大廈出來，在保安位置上總是看不到已經下班的他。
我覺得，我覺得，我其實用上了大半生時間來準備這「聚疊」工程，只是從今年五月開始走了很意想不到的一步，離離合合還是要逗在這區。如黎肖嫻所言， 黃竹坑（節寫WCH）是重點，我要處理的材料遠遠超於撿拾回來的物理現成物，也許還包括：搬搬抬抬的路線、時間和僅有的同伴；到垃圾據點探訪的期待；在馬路十字路口翻倒了的手推車；保安叔叔、清潔姐姐、大排檔檔口老闆娘的友善問侯；泥頭司機那不耐煩的尾板上落聲；在裝修師傅旁邊等待著看似可用於「聚疊」工程的物料而吸入的塵；月頭到包租公的咖啡豆貨倉試咖啡的不安；還有我一直在這工作生活的情意和身體活動的感覺。更恰巧的，是我的名字（王鎮海 Wong Chun Hoi) 的英文譯名也是WCH。
王鎮海 / 藝工程師 （2015年7月21日）
