While thinking about how to visualise the interview content and construct an appropriate publication format, I had a meeting with outside tutor, Oliver Smith.
At that time, I had this thought: the core of my project is the collection and publication of personal narratives, which lies in understanding publishing itself as an action—an ongoing behaviour, process, and mechanism. In this project, I do not see publishing simply as the design of a book, but rather as a dynamic and continuously ongoing collective action. This led me to think that perhaps the process itself could become a work, rather than only the content collected from it become the final publication. In other words, I was thinking perhaps I could design not just a publication, but a visualization of the collective process of “collecting stories → publishing stories” itself. This raised further questions for me: how could such a mechanism be visualize through design, and how could it actually operate?
I started imagining workshop settings, public installations, or mobile publishing devices that could bring both “collecting” and “publishing” into the same space simultaneously. For example:
- a device that allows audiences to write, scan, and print content on site;
- a mobile archive or publishing station that could collect and generate publication material in public spaces;
- or an open writing setting where participants could write, leave traces, and somehow become “published” in real time.
Therefore, much of our discussion revolved around this participatory aspect of the project.
During the meeting, Olivier mentioned a projection animation project by Studio Moniker. In that project, audiences filled in pre-designed sheets within an exhibition setting, and their input was then transformed into animated projections displayed on the wall. This case aligns with my thinking; it makes participation a part of the creative process.
Following this direction, Olivier suggested three important questions that I could continue considering.
First, how do participants input content?
I could perhaps provide different kinds of “input tools”: various paper sizes, different colours and thicknesses of pens, templates, and formats…… allowing participants greater freedom to organise and construct their own forms of expression. The tools themselves would inevitably shape the way stories are articulated and structured.
Second, how will the content be compiled?
Will it be projected and generated in real time, or collected and edited later?
Olivier gave me the example of Mari Matsutoya‘s work, in which she transcribe conversations she heard within exhibition spaces in real time, and later compiling these fragments into publications. This example led me to reflect on my own position within such an interaction. Would I become a transcriber who listens, records, and translates? Or would I simply provide the tools through which others can speak for themselves?
Third, how will the content ultimately be “published”?
If the material becomes visible in real time, what form will that visibility take? For example:
- Will the content be projected?
- Or could audiences directly attach materials onto a wall? Would it gradually form a kind of collective board? If so, What would the shape, scale, and structure of that board look like?
Overall, this is a direction that I find particularly exciting and hope to continue exploring in the future.
Lastly, Olivier mentioned something that deeply resonated with me: memory itself, and oral history, can function as a form of resistance.
Many experiences, identities, and emotions may not be formally recorded, publicly visible, or even allowed to leave physical traces. Yet people continue to preserve them through memory, storytelling, repetition, and listening.
This made me think more deeply about the significance of oral narratives and storytelling within my current project. These fragmented, intimate, and often unspeakable voices gradually form a collective memory precisely through the act of being repeatedly spoken, shared, and transmitted—becoming a presence capable of resisting silence itself. Oral history therefore becomes not only a method of documentation; its documentation is also a resistance against erasure, suppression, and forgetting.
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