Contemplating the “Nachleben” (afterlife, survival) of images in Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas, Vennes Cheng traces the intellectual sources of the anachronistic and biomorphic forces behind his phantasmagoric retrieval, a unique way to create art history as constellations of found objects, impulses, emotions, phenomena and complex temporality.作為藝術史的實驗,阿比沃堡最後遺作《記憶地圖》所用的「圖像(星)群」方法,牽涉到圖像的生存與復生。鄭秀慧透過德文 Nachleben 的不同翻譯,進一步理解這可形容為「幻象檢索」的導向如何擱置了年表、分期等結構,轉向視覺上的相似性、記憶的衝動、要體現的情感等的並置,衍生出實驗性的藝術歷史。
THINK-PAD series records PhD researcher Vennes Cheng’s ongoing exploration for an alternative historiographic perspective that asserts the productiveness of histories deemed incomplete as they keep the door open for constant revision. Her objective is to revitalize our critical understanding of art in Hong Kong.