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。
Reality once again confronts us with the fallacy that “history” is a subject that concerns only those studying the humanities. Researcher Vennes Cheng takes us back to a more basic question that deems history the literacy of contemporary global citizen, asking: what is the difference between historical reality and lived reality? 歷史是唸文科的人的事這想法或許有急切矯正的必要。歷史進入我們的日常知識領域,間接導引個人和社群行動的取決,或成為在位者下令的理據。退後一步,鄭秀慧問:歷史的現實與活在當下的現實有何不同?這是當代公民的基本道德素養罷。
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.