Translator’s notes

29 February 2018, Unstable transmission
An unnamed server in 香港 (Hong Kong) hosts 流泥 (Concrete Flux) magazine, as it answers a request from a client in nearby 深圳 (Shenzhen) the pitch of the cooling system’s hum rises.

The page requested is a photostory shot in 大裕庙 (Dayu Monastery) of a group eating lunch. In staccato bursts, image files are served. The first image is 5.638 kilobytes and 250 pixels wide. Blurred. Low fidelity. The client’s computer confirms receipt. The server responds with a larger file, 21.145 kilobytes and 250 pixels wide. Dithered. Medium fidelity. The exchange continues until a rich, high resolution, high fidelity file is received. The machine to machine conversation is not idle chatter, rather it is a fail-safe system designed to negotiate the so-called ‘great firewall’. It is an aesthetic strategy.

18 October 2017, The aesthetic journalist
There is dust trapped in the lens of the camera from her previous shoot in the 塔克拉玛干沙漠 (Taklamakan Desert) West China. As she removes the lens cap, a small portion of the desert falls to the floor.

Her presence as an aesthetic journalist is unsolicited. Those around the table are pleased by her attention but the focus of her video camera is unclear. Are her wandering shots a stylistic decision or unschooled impulse? The camera has been recording continuously for three hours, and only thirty minutes of battery life remains. She moves with a compulsion to document the group’s discussions. Their warmth and connectivity resonate with her own hopes of “tracing the not-yet-material potential of our moment”. Our “negative moment”. Inchoate and turbid.

Written as Concrete Flux in collaboration with Solveig Suess and in response to the work of Rectangle (Lizzie Malcolm and Dan Powers).